


The King's Confessor

by Your_Buddy_Kieth



Category: XCOM (Video Games) & Related Fandoms
Genre: /scaly/, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:22:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 23,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28156767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Your_Buddy_Kieth/pseuds/Your_Buddy_Kieth
Summary: A member of Doctor Vahlen's team in a hidden New Arctic facility is tasked with Subject Gamma's education.
Relationships: Viper King/Original Character
Comments: 6
Kudos: 34





	1. Chapter 1

Another dawn with the light of the sun filtering down into the cave. No warmth comes with it. I hold in my hands a steaming cup of coffee, the warmth fighting for dominance of my fingers against the New Arctic cold. The scent of the roasted beans and hot water trails up to my nose, and with the first sip trailing warmth down to my core it dispels the weariness in my heart and the cold in my bones. Its blessings welcome, the taste does nothing for my senses, mouth curling in disgust. Black as battery acid. No sugar or cream up here.

Before the invasion this was the ass end of Russia. The kind of place no sane soul wishes to go that was not already born of its bitter chill. Then again, I may be hard pressed to classify my boss among those sane souls. Common sensibilities are the price paid for genius, the price of that power to peer into Mother Nature’s hiding places.

Another draft from the warm mug between my naked fingers grants the inertia to pull myself from the cold stone upon which I had sit to watch the sunrise. I turn from the morning light, and what greets me is cold metal stretched across more cold stone. The thump of my heavy boots accompanies me to the keypad. Four familiar electronic chirps sing from the machine, and the gate unlocks with a hydraulic hiss.

“Guten Morgen, Mister Cole,” the clinical tones of Dr. Vahlen greet me as I enter. Clipboard in hand, pen moving like lightning, she scrawls looping ciphered text. “Are you ready for Subject Gamma’s lessons today?”

Surrounding us, other lab assistants and technicians move to and fro. Our team is small. It needs to be. Supply is scarce out here when we need to hide not only from ADVENT, but from the resistance. If they knew what we were doing here they would raid us and burn our lab to the ground, one as surely as the other.

“Caffeinated and ready, Doctor.”

“Excellent,” she turns to me and looks me up and down. A dry, expectant smile of approval finds her eyes. “And already dressed for the job. You continue to impress.”

Doctor Vahlen is not the same woman I worked with in the invasion. Her hair is marred with grey, and a streak of white that she tucks behind her ear. When her eyes began to go, she was not shy about using gene therapy rather than deign to wear glasses like a normal person. It’s a shame, she could have pulled off the sexy librarian look. For the people who are into that sort of thing. Instead she only fed into the rumors among the lab techs that she is secretly a reptilian.

Into the enclosure I descend, colleagues watching from above behind a pane of mindshield glass. Behind my I drag the carcass of a wild boar, freshly caught by our hunters. Gamma is easier to work with when fed. Nutrient slop from the tanks does little for the appetite. From the opposite end of the enclosure emerges Vahlen’s pet project. Low to the ground, he slides over the rocks to meet me in the middle. A plastic table has been unfolded, a centerpiece to the observation enclosure, and beside it a plastic chair for me.

Heaving, I hurl the gift of swine in his direction. A flash of white lightning shoots from the floor and snatches the boar from the air, driving it into the ground. Black eyes, amber reptilian slits at the center, look up at me. Slowly they widen from their narrow, almost imperceptible predatory line, into a smoother and rounder expression of recognition.

I try not to pay attention when he eats. Instead, I take my seat at the table and wait, hands folded in front of me, fingers now protected by warm winter gear. “How are you feeling today, Gamma?”

“I want to go outside.” The pronunciation of his English is smooth and natural. I try not to brag, but I like to think part of that is my skill as a teacher. A high school chemistry teacher before the invasion, a lab assistant for XCOM during the invasion, now a private tutor for an alien. My life has come full circle.

Gamma’s full form slides into view. Snow white scales, glowing under the artificial light. Patterns of blue and black decorate his back. The black horns along the edges of his hood and waist are not present on the female viper cadavers that Vahlen ‘acquired’. There is no apparent practical use. Evidence of sexual dimorphism in the species before the Elders dug into them. That means they have a homeworld somewhere, just like us.

No garb clothes his naked form, the sleek tone of the muscles in his chest bare for all to see. Modesty is not a concern with his equipment packed away, and the cold never bothered him anyway.

“You know I’m not allowed to take you outside, Gamma. Have you finished reading the book I gave you?”

The first male specimen of his kind, that we know of, to set coil on the Earth. Gamma’s long body winds beneath him from his standing position on the opposite side of our table. Poised like a spring. In front of him, hands with four digits each are wrapped around the cover of the book. Of Mice and Men. Gamma’s head curls down to regard his possession, which he sets upon the table with reluctance. “I have.”

“What did you think of the story?”

His eyes watch me, watch my face. For any hint of a tell, of what I want to hear. Subject Gamma is clever. The cleverest of the three by far. “Am I meant to be Lennie?” I cannot help but laugh at the idea, an expression that Gamma recognizes from our past interactions. His hood flares out, and his tone of voice is insulted. “What is so funny?”

“You’re not Lennie, Gamma. You’re too smart for that. Sometimes a book is just a book.”

My compliment brings him back down, his posture relaxes but does not sink. He makes certain that he is always the tallest in the room. I know Gamma. His growth and development were accelerated when Vahlen thawed him out, but in all that time I have been his mentor. Gamma has an ego, and he loves to have it stroked.

“I liked George, until the end,” at last he opens up honestly.

“Then do you think George made the wrong decision? What would you have done instead?”

“Lennie trusted him, and he killed Lennie. He should have taken the gun, and destroyed the enemies that were coming for Lennie.”

I can see in Gamma’s body language that the betrayal is bothering him. The tensing muscles in his hands, the drooping edges of his mouth as his long pink tongue flicks in and out. Expressions he learned from watching me. Taking a chance, I reach out and set my right hand on his arm. Even through the glove I can feel how cold he is. It happens whenever he gets upset or feels threatened, as part of a defense mechanism. I know of nothing like it in nature. Could it be the Elder’s tampering, or are there even stranger natural abilities among aliens we humans have yet to meet?

“They would be murderers, and both of them would be on the run.”

“They would still be together,” Gamma insists, stubborn and uncompromising on that. I can see quickly that trying to reason with him now is going to go nowhere.

“Why don’t we move on to mathematics?” I offer, to Gamma’s immediate agreement. A short, sharp dip of his head. I can feel the cold beneath my hand fade to warmth, from his calming emotions and the heat sapped from my touch. Our lesson resumes where I left off last time, teaching the process of division. When the emotional element is taken out, Gamma excels. He learns at a rate surpassing human students. Is it a natural Viper trait, or a result of Vahlen’s modifications, I wonder?

But to my regret, our time together must come to an end. “I think that about wraps up today’s lesson. It’s time for your daily physical, Gamma. And time for my lunch.” The edges of his reptilian irises draw closer, narrower. Gamma looks away from me indignantly.

“I know you don’t like it, Prince.” I stand and walk around the table to take him by the arm, whispering to him too quietly for the observers to hear. Vahlen disapproves of nicknaming the subjects, of getting too attached to them. “How about this, I promise to be there the entire time. No lunch until I know you’re alright.”

A deep sigh from down in his body releases a cloud of misty breath, causing frost to spider across the surface of the table in front of him. “You will be there the entire time, Teacher?”

“Nothing would stop me.” Gently, I pull on his arm. 

He indignantly pulls his arm away. “I am not a child. I can go on my own.” Down to the floor his upper body dips, hovering just above the stone as he glides away faster than I can keep up with.

I follow him, hand in my pocket as he comes to a stop and waits for me near a tall rock pillar. When I stand next to him out of view of the observation deck, I slip a small chocolate covered cherry out of my pocket and hold it out for him. That long tongue whips out and wraps around it with pinpoint accuracy, tugging it into his mouth where he holds it and savors it just the way I taught him. “I’ll see you soon, Gamma. I’ll be right there with you.”

I remember the early days well. Did vipers always grow up so quickly? Or is that just another of the Elders’ modifications? Back then Gamma was no larger than a dog, all coiled up on the floor of the observation room. He loved my lessons, loved learning. Then again it was the only time he was out of that tank. Suspended like a pickle in a jar, is that any way for a living, thinking creature to live?

He was so disarming, with his perpetual puppy dog smile and none of the black spikes along his side. Those grew in later. I never understood their fears until that one day it went wrong. The day I was reminded that we were dealing with an alien war machine.

Across from me at that same table, coiled on an elevated booster seat, Gamma had been learning his words using alphabet blocks. “Next, I want you to spell washing for me. Washing.”

Gamma’s body stretches out, arching over the table. His muscular tail holds his torso there like as though it were defying gravity. Tiny hands grasp each block, reptilian eyes taking due measure of each letter in turn. Once he finds the letters he is looking for there is no hesitation. Arranged on the table between us is w-a-s-h-i-n-g.

“Very good, Subject Gamma. Can you use washing in a sentence?”

The long tongue in his mouth begins feeling around, testing sounds. He speaks slowly to approximate the sounds that a human mouth can make. “We wash the table after arts and crafts.” He looks up at me and I place a hand on his head, a proud smile on my face.

“That’s right. You’re getting good at this.”

Our lesson is brought to a halt by the intercom crackling to life above. Doctor Vahlen’s cold voice sounds even more distant in the wide, echoing observation chamber. “The allocated time for today’s lesson is over. It is time for Subject Gamma to return to its tank.”

It’s earlier than normal. Vahlen must be eager to run more of her tests. I get up from my chair to lead Gamma back to the exit of the chamber, but he refuses to budge. Even against my pull, his body remains firm. “Too soon. I want to learn more!”

I have to pick him up to move him. He fights against me, trying to wriggle free. I can feel his body getting colder, painfully cold against my bare hands. He’s never fought me like this before. Must be getting into a rebellious phase.

“Mister Cole, be careful!” Vahlen’s voice urges me from above. She presses the alert button and guards begin to rappel down the walls.

“Wait!” I put the struggling snake back down in his high chair and turn to face the two security officers. They are wearing old standard issue XCOM Carapace Armor from the invasion. I can’t see their faces behind tinted glass visors, but I know them. Everyone in a facility this small knows each other. “Grace, Harry. Hold on. I have this under control.”

“It’s poising to strike!” Grace shouts at me, leveling her handgun at Gamma. In a fit of heroic stupidity, I jump in the way. It is not a bullet that rips through me. I feel a sudden numbing of pins and needles shoot through my left arm. The world seems to run in slow motion as I look to the side. It’s like my arm has been covered in liquid nitrogen, frozen solid in an instant. I scream and feel my legs give out as I faint.

The last thing I see is Gamma slithering down to my side with a mortified look on his face, and Harry jabbing a stun prod into his stomach.

That was a long time ago. Six years. I flex the fingers on my prosthetic arm. There is no feeling in them. The only thing that tells me they are moving at all is the sound of tapping on the arm of my plastic chair. My face wears that same mortified look that Gamma had that day. The feeling of betrayal as I watch him poked and prodded in a massive test tube, suspended in chemicals that simultaneously paralyze and sustain him. Little, tiny mechanical digits not unlike my own extract samples with needles. They dig into private places. I can see in his face that he is aware even as his body cannot move.

This is a daily occurrence. Any time Gamma is not in his lessons with me, he is being researched or held in this tube suspended while one of the other subjects is researched. I can see the back of Vahlen’s head as she taps on the keyboard, playing with Gamma like a marionette on her strings. Even without seeing it, I can feel the smug, contented smile on her face.

She is not the same person I knew during the invasion. Are any of us?


	2. Chapter 2

I remember a time when I was an early riser. Every morning I would roll out of bed ready to take on the day. Maybe I’m getting old, or maybe it’s just the cold. Even here, underground and behind walls of alien alloy, the cold seeps down. The New Arctic. Siberia. I don’t know whether the aliens’ name for this place feels colder than our name for it, or not.

The smell wafting under the door of the men’s quarters is what finally gets me up. Hot chocolate. A promise of warmth greater than that my scavenged blankets could offer. My muscles filled with new life, I throw the sheet off and swing out of bed to slip into my day clothes.

When I emerge from the chrysalis of sleep, dreary eyed and dragging my fee through the common area’s door, I find none other than Doctor Vahlen herself stirring the nectar of the gods. Like a female Prometheus who had stolen away the secrets of Olympus to bring them down to us mortals. It’s almost enough to make the prospect of hot chocolate in the morning feel tainted. Almost.

“Doctor? Didn’t you say we didn’t have a lot of this left, only for special occasions?” rubbing my tired eyes, I slide down next to the table in a slump that mostly lands on the chair I was aiming for.

“This is a special occasion.” Her head does not turn when talking to me. Even when all she’s doing is making hot chocolate, her eyes are glued to the task. As if it were the formula for an elixir of youth. I’m too tired to ask again, so she resumes talking where she left off. “The preparations are at last completed for Subject Gamma to go on a field trip. He can finally see the sun.”

A complicated mixture of emotions bubbles up inside of me. Joy, to finally give Gamma the thing he’s been asking for since he was small. Dread, because I know that it’s going to be me escorting him out into the frozen wasteland above us. And last but not least, worry. “What if we run into ADVENT?”

The Ethereals use the New Arctic as a training ground for their alien soldiers, especially for their vipers. Our perimeter cameras have spotted patrols before, shooting at birds for target practice. Even for Doctor Vahlen this seems like a massive risk. And for what, sentiment?

A mug clacking against the table in front of me, steaming a heavenly smell up into my nostrils, stirs me from my thoughts. I look up and see Vahlen’s inhuman, slitted pupils looking down at me. The edges of her eyes are stiff even as she smiles, like a model’s face frozen in time by Botox injections. “There will be no patrols today, I assure you. I have studied their routines.”

I wrap the fingers of my prosthetic hand around the mug, its scalding heat no threat to cold metal. My other hand I hover in the steam rising from it, absorbing every bit of warmth it has to offer. I dare not blow on it and speed up entropy taking this precious moment away. “I know how methodical you are, Doctor. But can you really predict with perfect certainty what the aliens will do? They’re aliens, not human.”

“I am confident.”

Other scientists and lab technicians filing out of their quarters to the siren scent of hot chocolate keeps me from voicing any more concerns. Vahlen turns her back to me, announcing that the conversation is finished, as she rations out the nectar of the gods to each supplicant in turn. I lift the mug to my lips and embrace the scalding touch.

From the tongue down to the stomach, a warmth fills my body. Trickling through me like sunlight through the cracks in an overcast day. Memories flood to mind. Pulled to the surface by the smell and the taste and the heat, memories encoded in every inch of my body.

The first time I had hot chocolate was out at my uncle’s hunting cabin. I remember auntie Sharon telling me as I shivered under my blankets, “Get yourself up, lazybones. I’ve got something to help you warm up for the day.”

It was not her words that roused me from my bed, but the smell. At the time I thought that she was making a chocolate cake. Soon, I was seated in front of the crackling fireplace with a porcelain mug in front of me. Little pink marshmallows floating in a steaming cup of chocolatey brown liquid.

That was the day my uncle taught me to shoot. We went out into the snow and he set empty bottles filled with rocks up on a post. It was so different from in the video games. Memories stirred by the first sip of hot chocolate scalding my tongue, I can recall the advice he gave me. How to steady the gun with my shoulder, the way to set my feet to better handle the recoil. Lessons meant to teach me how to hunt had become life saving during the invasion and occupation.

I steel myself, knowing that one miscalculation by Doctor Vahlen could mean using those skills again today.

Wrapped up in my parka, I step into the observation chamber. There are no scientists watching with pen and ink and paper in hand, not this time. Only former XCOM security guards posted in their usual vantage points. The different situation at an unusual time is all too obvious. Subject Gamma slithers into the room apprehensively. All his life has been routine and measured. Any change is new and frightening.

“It’s alright, Gamma. I’m only here to give you good news today.”

I pull back my chair and take a seat at our table. Subject Gamma inches out from behind his hiding place. The twin tips of his tongue taste the air, coils winding up beneath him across from my chair. “There is no one watching us.” He leaves out the guards, but I know his meaning.

“Today, Doctor Vahlen has given permission for me to take you outside. You’re finally going to get some fresh air, Gamma.” My smile is genuine, but so is the worry in my eyes. I know he can see it. The news excites him at first, the thorns on either side of his hood perking up and wiggling in a way I know means he’s eager. But the excitement dies in his throat before he can celebrate, when he sees my reluctance.

Before my pupil can jump to the wrong conclusions, I open up more. “It might not be safe for us outside. I don’t agree with the Doctor that this is a good idea, but I know you’ve wanted this for a long time.”

“Not safe for me, or not safe for you?”

Gamma’s question steals the smile from my face, in its place clear uncertainty. How would ADVENT react to an alien outside of their control, would they kill or capture? “I don’t know if the danger would kill you Gamma, but I know it wouldn’t be good for you.”

Both of his eyes are fixed on me. The same shape as Doctor Vahlen’s cold reptilian eyes, pupils slitted and watching me with an intelligence beyond the average human. And yet when he smiles, I can see it in the way his eyes soften. To my surprise, he is the one to reassure me. “I will protect us both if need be.”

The edges of my mouth curl up and I pat him on the arm with my right hand, the one made of flesh and blood. “I promise to do the same.” And he knows it. I’ve proven it once before. “I brought some armor for you, just in case. Do you want me to help you put it on?”

Gamma has never been given clothing before, so he is quickly at my side when I pull a set of old prewar body armor from my bag. I can hear the guards shift at his sudden movement, but I hold up a hand to let them know I’m alright. Holding up the vest, I press it against Gamma’s slim torso, lean yet rippling with muscle. I wish I had genetically guaranteed abs like that. 

The armor would get caught on the thorns of his hood if he put it on normally. Vahlen had it modified with Velcro straps on the shoulders, so that it could be peeled open and slid on up his tail instead. “The ballistic fabric won’t do anything against plasma fire, but there are some plates in the chest area. Here, we need to work this up your tail to get it on. I know it’s not perfect.”

We begin at the end, Gamma flowing through the vest like a river of white water. I keep it held open for him with both hands and everything goes smoothly until we reach the spikes around his waist. Smaller than the ones on his hood, they still catch on the fabric and I need to take off my glove to manually work it around them one by one. Gamma watches the whole process with an embarrassed look, always peeking at the guards watching in turn.

“This is undignified. I do not like needing help like this. Do you need help to dress yourself?” Gamma asks, indignant.

“Only when I was a child. Don’t worry, I’m sure we can perfect better clothing for you.” With one final tug, I get the vest up past his hips and strap it on around his shoulders. “That feel comfortable?”

“They will not allow me to wear it. The Doctor says that it humanizes me too much.”

I turn so that the guards cannot see my face when I sigh. He overhears a lot of things in the suspension tube that make my job harder. And besides that, things that must hurt him to hear. Treating the Subjects like weapons is exactly what the Elders are doing, can we say we’re any better when we’re holed up in a secret laboratory in the arctic doing the exact same thing?

“I know how much you hate it here, and I understand,” I move my lips silently and Gamma’s eyes follow them. A secret form of communication I helped him learn, letting me talk to him without being overheard. To my disappointment it only works one way. Gamma’s mouth movement is stiffer, more limited than a human’s. All his vocalizations are in the tongue and the throat. “Don’t try to run away, please. Let’s just enjoy some time outside.” Yes, us. I think he will be enjoying it more than me. I always hated the cold.

Gamma’s hood narrows as he pulls it in. Part of our silent communication, once for yes and twice for no. Satisfied that he won’t try anything, I set my bare hand against his arm. The smooth sensation of his scales against my skin as I run it down his arm is as soothing for me as it is for him, and I can feel him relax. “We should get going. This time, you come back up with me.”

I put my glove back on and wrap my scarf tighter around my face. It’s going to be cold out there.

Made tough and brittle by the pervading cold, the outer layer of the snow crunches and creaks beneath my feet like the boards of an old, abandoned mansion. The blanket of white stretches in all directions and extends even into the sky, broken only by the sun and the trees. Behind us the mountain stands as a monument.

There are three armed guards with us. Not Grace or Harry. Gamma is always more on edge around them, they bring up bad memories. I know them all well, the facility is a small community. Not much for entertainment but to talk to each other or play cards. All three are dressed in winterized carapace armor.

Jonesy is in the lead with a shotgun. He was in the United States army before the invasion and volunteered for XCOM during the invasion. One of our most experienced career soldiers. He doesn’t talk much about what he saw in the invasion, and I get it. Plenty of us are ex-XCOM too. We’ve seen some of it.

Subject Gamma is between me and Chao. Another ex-XCOM, but like me he wasn’t originally a soldier. Used to be one of Shen’s engineers. When they started to design the GREMLINs towards the end of the war, he volunteered for training to test them in the field. He’s got one with him now, performing passive field scans. The thing’s flight repulsors are nonfunctional so he carries it as a backpack.

At our rear is Modesty. At least that’s what she goes by, I don’t know for sure if it’s her given name or a nickname. Russian woman, her English is not very good. She and her parents lived out here, paranoid anti-government types. They were the leaders of a resistance cell up here until ADVENT ‘peacekeepers’ arrived to ‘peacefully disperse’ the resistance camp. We found her half dead in the snow and brought her in. Hell of a shot with a rifle

Modesty has a leafy branch in her hand, sweeping it from side to side behind us to cover the trail. We leave footprints in the snow and ADVENT patrols can follow us back to the facility. Not to mention the rut that Gamma leaves behind him.

“What do you think, Subject Gamma?” the answer to my question is written across his body language, clear as the white snow. He stares up at the sky with a hand covering his eyes from the intense brightness. Then he flicks his eyes to the pine trees covered in small green needles. Then the snow, which he scoops up in his hand to marvels at.

“This is better than all the books in the world. It is so beautiful,” Gamma looks at me with his hood thorns twitching upwards, wiggling in joy. His excitement is contagious and cracks me up into a smile. Even Chao is smiling, I can see it under Gamma’s arm. Try as the engineer may to hide it.

“Does the cold bother you at all?” I ask, genuinely curious. The cave where we meet was never warm. The wind out here though, it makes a huge difference.

Gamma’s hood tightens in brief introspection. “A little. The wind makes my eyes feel dry.” Lids slide in from either side to narrow his eyes, not from above like a human’s. They are able to leave the slits of his pupils exposed even while the rest of the eye is covered up. “You cannot handle the cold very well,” he observes, running a claw along the crisp outer fabric of my parka.

“No, if I went dragging through the snow naked like you I would lose a lot of important parts.” Curiously, his arm does not feel cold as it does when he is upset. Instead it feels warm against the fabric. I take off my glove and reach out to touch his hand. Confirming that yes, he feels warm to the touch. “You warm up when it’s cold. Does that ever happen after one of your episodes?” Gamma looks away shyly when I bring it up.

“Yes. Sometimes it feels warm after.” His answer makes sense. It’s not as though his body can somehow run on the cold instead of on heat, Carnot would be rolling over in his grave. It compensates with heat.

“I don’t know why I let myself think you were some sort of ice elemental,” I say to myself, a chuckle breathed out as a plume of warm steam in the freezing air. Gamma looks at me curiously with his horns perked up. “It’s nothing, nevermind. Maybe I’ll explain to you someday.” As if Vahlen would ever let me show Gamma video games. 

“Hold on,” a third voice cuts in. Chao, eyes scanning across readings from his cobbled together GREMLIN. “I’m picking up movement to our right.”

I turn my head and look, but tree and foliage cover blocks line of sight. Modesty holds up a hand towards us, open palm facing back at us. The hand sign to remain still and be quiet. She lowers her profile while she slides ahead as silent as a serpent, herself. A thin opening between the bush and the tree, her eye peers through. My heart skips a beat when she holds up a hand with four fingers, and then twists her digits around to form a crude image of a capital A. Four contacts. ADVENT.


	3. Chapter 3

Everyone has gone still. All but for Gamma, who looks at me for direction. I gently reach up and take him by the arm, guiding him back up the incline of the mountain. I go as silently as I can, each crunch of snow beneath my feet sounding like a jet engine in my ears.

Our squad is doing their damnedest to remain quiet. And yet nature, the gods, fate, whoever each of us might choose to curse has other plans for us. Jonesy’s foot finds loose footing upon the snow, and my eyes catch his as they fall. Back down the hill towards the bushes, he slides on the flow of loose snow. Any other day, any other place, a minor inconvenience. Here, this day? Disaster.

Jonesy topples into the bush, branches cracking and snapping. The response is swift and brutal as plasma fire launches through from the other side, reducing the frosted wood to smoldering wreckage and scalding vapor. The carapace armor does its job and eats the worst of the plasma that grazes Jonesy’s side.

A silent retreat is no longer an option. We cannot lead them back to base. Jonesy rolls to the side behind the tree, Modesty vanishes into the snow, and Chao dives for cover. I try to move with him, but Subject Gamma does not budge, my arm jarred by his heavy, stock still form. He’s staring through the space where the bushes used to be.

On the other side are three vipers in the black and red of ADVENT armor, plasma rifles in hand. With them an ADVENT Officer is taking aim at us. “They are like me.” His words are a blend of awe and betrayal, despair, and doubt. “You told me I was the only one.”

“Gamma, we need to move!” I shout, tackling him. His torso crumples beneath my weight and we drop into the snow. Just in time to feel the wind and hear the deafening whistle of the magnetic rifle bullet that sails past me and blows a cloud of snow and dirt into the air.

Two strong, scaled hands grab me by the shoulders and shove, rolling me off and down the hill. I land on my back in the snow and my dizzied vision settles back into place. Gamma is standing upright with his hands up, just the way he learned from us. Then I see something in is eyes. A split-second reaction and he jerks out of the way of another incoming round that hammers into the hillside behind him.

“Why are they shooting me?” his voice is a panic, gone all regal sense of pride and posture now that Gamma is flat in the snow being shot at.

There is no time to coddle him now. I spin over behind the same tree as Jonesy and lean out. My hunting rifle flew out of my hands in the fall and I grab the pistol in my holster. The small caliber weapon will barely put a chip in ADVENT armor. Instead I take aim at the tail on one of the vipers and squeeze off two rounds into her lower body. The impacts are accompanied by two bloody holes and a furious hiss.

I can see her rear back. I know what comes next and cover my mouth, but the ringing of a high caliber rifle deafens us all. In that sudden stillness the viper drops with a hole in her head the size of a baseball. I have no idea where Modesty is, but I owe her one today.

“Hel-!” I hear Chao’s voice call out from behind and above. When I whip around, one of the vipers has slipped past our line and grabbed Chao. He is in her coils before he can get more than one choked, desperate syllable out. I keep low and claw my way up to him.

Although I try to take aim with my pistol, the risk of hitting Chao is too great. I hate to admit it, but I’m a lousy shot with a handgun. Instead I grab the viper’s shoulder and whip the butt of the gun across her face. The blow barely causes her to flinch, and I can’t help but feel that I made some mistakes. A cloud of green fumes shoots out of her mouth, from a pair of holes just beneath her tongue. Right into my face. I can feel a burning in my left eye and my throat as I choke on my breath.

I shove my face into the snow. With my gloved hand I shove it against my eyes. The sting of the cold is accompanied by the wetness of water as the snow melts against my face, and I force my eyes open to wash them out.

There is a thud beside me. I pull my hand away and see Chao, lying limp in the snow. God I hope he’s not dead. My prosthetic hand has not let go of the pistol, and in my pain I can see I fired off two stray rounds into the snow beside me. I still can’t breathe.

When I bring it to bear on the viper I find her not looking at me, not aiming her gun, but staring past me. Not even past me, off to the left somewhere. I follow her look and see Gamma locked onto her eyes. “Stop,” he says, his voice breathy and shaken. I swear there’s this flicker of bright purple behind his dark blue eyes, shooting across them light lightning. Then with more panic he shouts, “Stop!”

There is a boom behind my right ear that leaves my head ringing. I can hear the ghost of a word slipping by me. I still can’t breathe. The thought keeps repeating itself in my head, and I drop my pistol in the snow to fall forward on my hands and knees and gasp at the air. The melted snow on my face begins to freeze again, a cold numb stinging sensation. I can’t breathe.

A glove lands in front of me and an exposed hand grabs a red cannister from Chao’s belt. Jonesy kicks me onto my side with his foot and straddles my chest, holding my arms back as I try to reach for my throat. He practically jams the nozzle of the cannister into my mouth and I feel wetness, spraying and running down. As I gasp, I can feel it enter my lungs. Then my world goes black.

I blink away the sleep from my eyes. The wetness makes the cold sink into them and forces me to wake. In front of me, my face reflected in the mirror. It looks older than I like, older than I am. A stupid turn of phrase comes to mind, something my uncle used to say. “Forty years young.” My hair hangs down around my face, framing it from either side. Poorly washed, uncut, shaggy like a homeless man. Dirty blond, with a splayed beard like a crazed viking. My razor broke a year ago.

A knocking at the door of the washroom snaps me out of my reverie. “Hey come on, dude. You’re taking longer than the ladies!” I can hear Jonesy’s voice from outside, heckling me. With a short cough to clear my throat, I open the door and he shoves past me, urging me out. The door slams shut behind me.

It’s not a heavily staffed base. There are twenty-one of us, myself included, the subjects excluded. And only two washrooms, one for men and one for women. It’s a tough arrangement. Anyone who can’t wait has to freeze their balls off taking a piss out in the cave.

“Is Subject Gamma ready for the next lesson?” I ask Harry, waiting next in line after Jonesy.

“Yeah. Doctor Vahlen’s flushing the paralytics from his system now.” Harry’s a short guy, and one of the lucky ones whose hair doesn’t grow very quickly. It makes him one of the only men here not sporting hobo chic or an ugly haphazard cut delivered by dull office scissors.

I flash him a thumbs up while I slip around him out of the makeshift shack. The residential area of the facility looks a lot like one of those third world shanty towns, if you threw in some plates of alien alloy. The most fleshed out building is the kitchen and bunkhouse, then there are the two washrooms, Vahlen’s office, and the radio shack. We barely get any signal up here, and it’s inbound only. Vahlen doesn’t want to risk broadcasting from this dead zone. Makes us too easy to spot, she says. That means no communication with the remnants of XCOM, no shipments from nearby resistance. We are well and truly on our own.

Above my head a ramshackle series of pipes stretches out in a network across the buildings. Rainwater and melted snow is collected to run the sinks, but the pipes freeze up and need frequent maintenance. The toilets lack proper plumbing which means they need to be changed regularly like an outhouse, one hole for number one and one hole for number two. The number one gets filtered and recycled, which nobody likes to think too long about. And some sick, brilliant person built a generator that uses the number two for fuel. Some big shot from NASA who worked on space stations. God, it makes me feel out of my depth sometimes. A chemistry teacher out here working as an assistant for all these important world changing scientists and engineers.

I arrive at to the tunnels down into the observation chamber. Grace and Chao are on guard duty today, perched overlooking the big open area below. The tunnel on the other end, behind a layer of alien alloy and ballistic glass, is where Subject Gamma is led into the room from the ‘de-icing chamber’ as we’ve come to call it. The room where they clear his system, and then gets put back under after.

All those paralytics pumped into and out of his system can’t be good for his growth and development. I’ve noticed how sluggish and weak he is, emaciated even. 

Head still full of thoughts and doubts, I take my seat at the table and pull my jacket tighter around me, rubbing my hands together to generate heat. What I wouldn’t give for centralized heating. Gamma slithers out of the tunnel at the other end of the room. The young viper is thin and gangly, like those pictures of children in third world countries that corrupt charities plaster up to sucked you out of your money.

Plastered up. Those days are gone. All of those children are probably ADVENT test subjects now or ground up into a nutrient slop to make ‘ADVENT burgers’. Never even once.

“Good morning, Subject Gamma. Are you read for today’s lesson?” I ask, putting on a softer tone. The baby voice, as people say. Leaning down to my right I pop open a trunk and pull out one of the books inside. Today is another lesson helping him to visualize, associating words with images. Gamma nods his head shyly. “Come on over here, then.” I pat my knee with the palm of my hand.

His body slides easily up my leg as I hook a hand under his shoulders to help him lift himself up. For his size he’s heavier than one would expect. Even with poor exercise and nutrition that tail is solid muscle. Subject Gamma’s tail coils around the armrests of the chair and across my knees, and he leans back against my chest as I open the book in front of us. 

Gamma’s comprehension level is higher than it has any right to be, considering his age. It’s speaking that he’s always had trouble with. No surprise to me, with no family or parents to talk to, all he can do between our lessons is float in that tube and watch other people talk. My greatest struggle is helping him find his voice and the confidence to use it. 

Opened up in front of me is ‘Aladdin’, a picture book edition. “I would like you to read for me today, can you do that?”

“Yess Misser Cole,” Gamma answers in his tiny voice. It’s so quiet, barely a whisper.

The reading goes as well as I expected. Gamma’s pronunciation is clumsy, and he still has trouble with slurring. He tries to move his tongue like a human’s, but the tongue structure and teeth are completely wrong. I can’t help him with that, I’m only human myself after all.

When we get to the Prince Ali part of the story, I find myself smiling at old memories flooding back. Watching the movie on VHS with my aunt and uncle. All the words come flooding back. Okay, maybe not all the words. But the important ones. I interrupt Gamma reading with a rap of my knuckle on the table to get his attention. He turns his face straight up at me, hood pulling inwards. He brushes his face back and forth against the dangling ends of my beard, getting distracted by it.

“Do you want to try singing the song together?” I ask, pulling my beard to the side with one hand to get it out of the way. Gamma looks disappointed to see it go and the corners of his mouth droop. The scientists play music in the base, and he’s asked me about it before. So he knows vaguely what singing is.

“Ssing?” he rubs a three fingered hand over his face and looks up at the guards and scientists watching from above. I feel a little flush behind my beard when I realize the audience we’ll have, but this kind of thing is important to get him to come out of his shell more. I take his hand and gently move it away from his face.

“You don’t need to feel scared or embarrassed. I’ll sing with you. Just repeat the words after me.”

Gamma turns away from me, curling his head down and folding his hood around his face in front of his eyes. As if the whole world can’t see him just because he can’t see them. I let him be for a second, then another. Finally, one side of the hood pulls away and a single dark blue eye looks up at me, slitted pupil so wide it doesn’t look so different from a human’s. “Okay. Oly if you ssart.”

I gently lower Gamma down to the floor and set the book on the table. I don’t need to see the words. “Just copy me, Gamma,” I tell him. It’s the first time I’ve dropped the whole Subject part when talking to him. It feels good. More natural. More like how I see him in my head, not on cold clinical documents.

Trying not to think about how unhinged I must look to all the people watching, a guy in a parka with crazy wild hair, dancing and singing Prince Ali with a little white snake. But when I see Gamma start to break out, show more confidence, I know it was the right decision. He would never be able to do it if I didn’t do it first.

“Prince Ali, fabulous he, Ali Ababwa!” I sing out, sliding my feet in a shuffle on the floor. I swing out a hand, passing an imaginary ball to him. Gamma tries his best to copy my motions, swaying back and forth on his small frame with impressive balance but a lack of any practiced grace. He brings to mind images of a dancing inflatable mascot outside of some store.

“Pinss Ali, fabus he, Ali Abwa,” he sings back at me, and I don’t bother correcting his words, not now. As we continue, I feel more confident myself, performing more complicated moves. Or as much as my stiff bones can handle. Then I step on a part of the rock that’s slicker than the rest. Maybe a stalactite dripped condensation down on the floor there. Of all the things to consider as I’m falling, my feet going out from under me, it’s whether stalactite or stalagmite are the ones that drip down.

“Oogh,” I grunt as I land on my back, wincing and thankful that I didn’t crack my head on a ledge. Gamma is at my side in a flash, blue eyes stretched out wide in worry as his tongue flicks in and out rapidly.

“Cole iss okay? Hurt?” he asks, taking hold of my arm and shaking it between his small hands. I lean back my head and feel something bubbling up inside me. Then I start laughing, out loud, up into the echoing cavern. Laughing at the absurdity that I’ve hurt myself by slipping and falling in an icy cave in Siberia while dancing to my own poorly sung rendition of Prince Ali. I can even hear Chao’s voice snickering from his perch.

I place a hand on the side of Gamma’s head. I gently pat the soft, flexible cartilaginous material of his hood, much like the flexible flesh on my own nostrils and ears. “Worry not, Prince Gamma! Your Genie only needs you to wish it better.” And order me a masseuse.

“I wish it bedder,” he says, the sheer genuine… belief, in his voice, for lack of a better word. It sends me back into a fit of laughter. Maybe it’s best we didn’t get to the villain is a giant snake parts.

I’m interrupted by footsteps from my tunnel, and by Harry’s voice. “Going to have to cut the uh, lesson short here, Cole. Doctor Vahlen wants a word.”

I find the doctor up in the observation window. Two of the scientists are having a giggling fit between themselves, but Vahlen does not look amused. “What exactly do you think you are doing, Mister Cole? Do you think this is a game?”

“Excuse me, I thought you brought me in to teach the kid how to communicate?” I fire back at her, the resentment and all the criticisms I had pushed back bubbling up beneath the surface. The other scientists stop giggling and leave when they hear the tone of my voice. “I can’t teach him how to talk properly if he’s too shy and closed off to try. I was trying to teach him some confidence.”

The slits of Vahlen’s inhuman eyes narrow like a predator’s. “That does not require you to make a fool of yourself. Furthermore, that does not require this attachment you are developing towards Subject Gamma. You think it is fun and games dancing with it now, but that creature is dangerous. It is an alien war machine, and make no mistake, even now it could kill you if provoked.” I open my mouth to respond, but Vahlen holds up one hand in front of my face, cutting me off. I slap her hand out of the way, but not before she keeps going. “We do not need the Subject confident, Mister Cole. We need it obedient.”

“Have you considered making him loyal, instead?” I push back, placing extra emphasis on the fact that Gamma is not an ‘it’. 

“The parameters of the project are not something I am discussing with a lab tech. No more of these personal outbursts or you will be replaced. Go get some rest.” With an air of finality, Doctor Vahlen pushes past me shoulder with more strength than I expected from her meager frame. How extensively has the woman modded herself?

“There’s one more thing,” I call after her, and I feel a shiver run down my spine when her eyes lock onto mine. “I, I uh. I don’t know what exactly you want Subject Gamma for, but he won’t be much good to you the way he’s growing now. His development is magnitudes faster than a human’s. He needs regular exercise in the observation area, real food to bulk up, better nutrition. Unless you want a twig of a snake who can barely move?” Doctor Vahlen holds my stare in silence, until I break and look away. Seemingly satisfied, I can see a smug smile stretch across her face out of the corner of my eye.

I also see Gamma, sheepishly peeking through the ballistic glass windows of his transition tunnel. A guard points menacingly and Gamma lowers himself to keep moving back to his containment. I wonder how much he heard from that.

“I will take your advice into account.” Vahlen states with no emotion. 

And she did.

I jerk up with a cough. A wheezing, hacking cough that brings up a gob of something in my throat. I spit it off the side of the bed reflexively, and find a small plastic bucket waiting beside my bunk. My throat aches and my vision feels like it’s swimming. There is a shape sitting in a chair not far away. “What?” My memory fuzzy, I slowly sit up. A gentle, but firm hand rests on my chest and pushes me back down.

“You were in a shootout with some ADVENT, Cole. You breathed in viper venom,” a voice I recognize tells me. Doctor MacAfee, the medical kind. In fact, he’s a veterinarian. Doctor Vahlen must have brought him on board thinking he would adapt more quickly to working with alien biology.

“Chao?” I wheeze out, barely able to make a sound. It hurst to breathe, and to talk. As my vision adjusts to the dim lighting of the men’s bunkroom again, I can see the shape of someone in the next bunk past mine. My eyes feel strained and sore as I try to focus.

“Chao will be fine. He suffered multiple broken bones and ribs, but miraculously nothing important was ruptured. He needs time to recover, and so do you,” MacAfee holds something out to me, and I realize it’s a folded-up pocket mirror. Accepting it into my palm, I crack it open. A feeling of dread fills my mind as I dare to look. What damage has the viper venom done to my face?

The answer it turns out, is not much. But there is a thick black cloth wrapped around my left eye, which explains the trouble getting my vision to focus. My right eye, the good one, is bloodshot and itchy but otherwise looks fine. More than that, I’m reminded how much grey has creeped into my hair and beard. With a defeated sigh I flop back onto the bed and close the mirror in one smooth motion. “I look worse than Bradford.”

A good-natured laugh rings through the room as Doctor MacAfee takes back the hand mirror. “The patch is permanent until you can find a glass eye, I’m afraid. The left eye took the brunt of the aerosolized venom. You’re lucky you can still see at all. You’re also lucky Jonesy thought quickly and sprayed nanomed straight down your throat, or your vocal cords might be damaged permanently.”

“That’s me, I feel lucky,” I croak out sarcastically. More than anything, I want to go check on Gamma. I want to go chew out Vahlen for her stupid, stupid expedition. Exactly what I warned her would happen, happened. But my lungs don’t have the strength to get up and walk there, and I don’t have the will to croak through that shouting match.

“Rest your eye and rest your voice,” the doctor’s hand gently squeezes my shoulder in support, and he moves on to check on Chao. I follow his directions and close my eyes, trying to get more sleep.


	4. Chapter 4

Recovery has been a long road. Each day, Doctor MacAfee leads me through tests, breathing exercises, and physical therapy to get me back in form. Along the way, I find myself thinking more about Gamma than about my health. Is someone else teaching him and supervising his exercise while I am away? Or is he just sitting suspended in a tube?

The thought of it makes me wish I could heal faster by pushing myself harder. Doctor MacAfee’s urging tells me otherwise, that strain could only lead to permanent damage.

Now, I’m laying in my bed with no idea what time it is. This extended stay has expunged all sense of time from my mind. All I know is that the other staff are not in their beds. Only Chao and I. In my groggy stupor, the creak of the door hinges doesn’t bring my eyes to open. Naturally, I assume it is only one of the other men from the facility grabbing something or taking a break.

The shuffling, sliding noises that draw closer to my bed are not the footsteps I was expecting. And their familiarity is what makes my eyes flutter open. I can see Subject Gamma standing over me, and the strange sight makes me startle up into a seated position. He does not shy away from my sudden movement, looking me in the eye. Hs arms are crossed, tense, each hand clutching his elbow and pulling himself inwards. I can tell he’s upset. Yet his eyes are wide and scan over my prone form with obvious concern.

“Gamma?” I look at the door, where Harry and Jonesy are standing outfitted in their guard kit. “What’s going on?”

“Doctor Vahlen authorized a visit,” Jonesy tells me, and from his voice I can tell he scarcely believes the absurdity of those words himself.

“Are you going to survive?” speaking in a hesitant voice, Gamma lets one of his hands come loose and hang down by his side, held close by his other hand gripping its arm by the elbow. One load of pressure released. I look up at him and do my best to put on a brave smile.

My voice is still hoarse as I explain, “Yeah. My singing voice is probably ruined. I don’t think anyone will be complaining. When I’m not belting out broadway.”

Opening his mouth, Gamma stops and closes it again. His tongue flicks out, long and tinted blue. I can see flecks of frosty moisture gathered on it like winter’s first hoarfrost. The arm hanging at his side stretches out and his four digits wrap around the mattress beside me, squeezing it. He leans down and his tongue flicks out again, closer to my face. I see Harry tense up behind him and shake my head calmly to indicate that I’m fine.

Finding his voice finally, Gamma tells me quietly, “I will miss hearing you sing.” His eyes turn down to the floor and I can feel butterflies flutter up in my stomach at Gamma’s sentiment. I reach up and pat the back of his hand, but before I can say anything back, he flinches his hand away and asks a colder question that kills my elation. “Why did you lie to me? Why did you let me think I was alone?” The butterflies cluster together in the pit of my stomach. Like all my insides crashing down inside of me at the bottom of a rollercoaster when all of the G forces catch up with you. A hard ball bundled up, heavier than it feels like it ought to be.

Excuses rise up in my mind. Placating dismissals of guilt. I didn’t lie, he really is the only male of his kind. Just a miscommunication. Doctor Vahlen would disapprove of telling him the truth. I find myself the one tongue tied this time, unable to put to words an answer when I know all the excuses will fall flat.

“Why did the others like me attack us?”

The continued questions pile up and me, without any answers I can offer. How angry will the doctor be if I tell him the truth about ADVENT? She’d probably dump me out in the snow to freeze to death. And that’s the best-case scenario. “I’m sorry,” I finally manage to croak out. “I want to tell you. I’ll try to get permission.”

“Permission,” Gamma repeats, staring down at me. Locking right onto my eyes. “Are you as much a prisoner here as I am?”

“It’s. No. It’s complicated.” My voice catches on the stress tensing up in my dry throat and I cough. It keeps coming, my strained throat hacking and wheezing. Jonesy quickly comes over and helps me sit up to clear my throat, rubbing my back. When the coughing slows down, he holds up a plastic cup of water for me and I slowly sip it down.

“Cole needs his rest. It’s time to go back,” Jonesy orders Gamma. Casting me another look of mixed doubt, hurt and worry, Gamma doubles back on himself, his long tail flowing up to the side of the bunk and then gliding away as Harry escorts him out. Jonesy lays a hand on my shoulder and helps me lie gently back down. “Take it easy, buddy.” With that, he walks away towards the door.

“Send Vahlen,” I tell him as he goes. I don’t know if he heard me or not. The door shuts behind him and it’s just me and Chao in the dimly lit bunkroom, again.

“It’s hard, huh?” I hear Chao’s voice from behind me, in the bunk next door. “I feel bad for him too. The things they put him through. I can only imagine how you must feel.” I don’t strain my voice again to answer. I just close my eyes, feeling the dull ache at the edges of my shut eyelids, the ache of wanting to tear up presses against them. “It’s not so different from AI research,” he keeps talking. I don’t mind if he needs to get something off his chest. 

“Shen was really paranoid about it. There were many prototypes that felt so real to talk to, even just in text. Like real people. But he would always find a flaw and delete them. It was hard to watch.”

“Gamma isn’t like a real person. He is a real person,” I feel the need to point out.

“I know. What I mean is I’m not so sure they weren’t too. I don’t know if those AI development sessions were this horrible machine learning eugenics death camp or not. Maybe it’s just me not wanting my name attached to something, so I keep thinking maybe Shen was right and I shouldn’t question. But it’s just my monkey brain not wanting to feel bad.”

The two of us lay there in silence after that. Him, out of things to say. Me, too sore to say them even if I wanted to. Losing track of time again.

My eyelids are half shut, my mind drifting away as I doze in my bunk. Waiting to see if Doctor Vahlen will come see me is the only thing keeping me from giving in to sleep. What was she thinking when she sent us out there with Gamma? Can I talk her into finally telling him the truth, about everything? Idle, nervous thoughts poke through the daze of boredom whenever it feels I’m slipping.

The door opens, and I lift up a hand to rub at my face and eyes, yawning into my hand. My beard has grown out since I’ve been stuck in bed, and the hairs scratch at my palm. “Doctor?” I ask, turning my head. Though I expected it to be another false alarm, there she is, in her green and white labcoat.

“Yes, Mister Cole. I’m told you requested to see me,” her voice snaps me out of my half sleep as well as any ice water. I pull myself up into a sitting position, so that she’s not looking down on me. She still is, but I feel more confident nearer to eye level. Vahlen’s eyes aren’t on me, but on a clipboard in her hand.

“What is,” I start, ready to chew her out for putting all of us in danger with a risky expedition. Then I catch the words in my throat before they come out, prompting another small coughing fit. If I get her angry first, there’s no way she’ll let me tell Gamma anything. One thing at a time, and I can vent my frustrations any time but now.

“Try not to strain your voice. I can hear you fine if you whisper,” the doctor sets her clipboard down on a folding table and finally looks me in the eye.

“Yeah,” I breathe out softly. “It’s about Subject Gamma. He’s asking questions, questions about who attacked us. I need to be able to tell him about ADVENT.”

“There will be no need. My work is just about complete.”

The way she says it sends chills up my spine. “Your work? What work? Gam- Subject Gamma isn’t ready for any kind of field work if that’s what we’re trying to do here. Problem one is he has to trust us-”

“Mister Cole, your services as a tutor will not be necessary for much longer. Oh, there’s no need for that deer in the headlights look,” the chime of her light laugh sounds like the leitmotif of a horror movie monster. “You are free to stay on as an assistant. I am aware that finding somewhere to stay right now is a difficult prospect.”

I draw saliva into my mouth and swallow. “What are you doing to Gamma?” I ask, forgetting the formal Subject this time.

“Modesty brought me the control chips from the ADVENT corpses after your trip outside, as I requested. And from Jonesy’s report of the skirmish, Subject Gamma’s abilities have fully matured.”

Abilities? ADVENT control chip? “What are we doing here, Vahlen? I thought we were trying to recruit Gamma as an asset for XCOM, or something?”

“Your position as Subject Gamma’s handler was a failsafe. To induce Stockholm Syndrome in case my primary project failed. When I tried to keep you from getting too attached to the Subject, it was for your own sake. And,” her reptilian eyes narrow, “It is Doctor Vahlen.”

“Wait. Hold on,” I swing my legs off of the bed, stopping myself before standing up. I’m already out of breath, falling down is the last thing I need right now. “You sent Modesty to get control chips. You knew there was a patrol? It was all a setup?”

I never get an answer. An explosion from out in the facility pulls both of us out of our conversation. Chao sits up in his bunk, white as a sheet. “Are we under attack?”

“Stay here,” Vahlen orders. She snatches the clipboard and walks out.

“Stop!” I shout hoarsely, standing up and taking a step forward. I fall down onto my knees as I choke on the word. The creak of bedsprings tells me Chao is pulling himself out of bed, and his unsteady hand reaches out to try and pick me up by the shoulder. He’s still weak.

“Come on. If we do what she says and stay here we’re sitting ducks.”

A mixture of rage, fear, and other burning emotions swirl inside my head like a demented cocktail. All my muscles are tensed up and ready to snap. It takes every ounce of control to keep myself from punching the floor and breaking the hand I’ll probably need to shoot.

Trying to form words right now just makes me choke, so I stand up and let Chao lean on me. He’s in worse shape than I am, physically. The broken ribs are still healing and moving around must be painful. I need to get us to the armory. We can’t do much in a fight like this, but I would sooner have some armor between my soft tissues and ADVENT weapons.

Using my foot, I pull the hunting rifle from under my bunk and load it. Images flash through my mind as my hands run through familiar motions.

Alarms are blaring, a claxon that makes it impossible to think. Technicians are running around the lab, pulling down blast shutters over the wide glass windows that peer into other parts of the facility. Doctor Vahlen’s voice rings out clearly, rising above the screaming alarms and red lights, giving some direction. Some voice to our drowned-out thoughts. “Everyone! HQ is under attack! Secure the laboratory and assemble, we must reach the saferoom! Quickly!”

I run to my locker at the far side of the room, fumbling with the rotating lock in my sweaty, jittering fingers. “Come on come on, move!” I yell at my own two hands, and finally the lock snaps open. I throw open the locker and grab the weapon I always keep in case of emergencies, ever since the invasion started. My uncle’s old hunting rifle.

Grabbing a magazine from my bag, I slot it into the Winchester, feeling the weapon click into place. Just like my uncle taught me. The rifle is nothing compared to the weapons XCOM has at their disposal. An old, bolt action rifle for hunting, I don’t even have it fitted with high caliber rounds. Still I’d sooner have this than my bare hands if a muton comes charging at me.

“Mister Cole,” Doctor Vahlen places a hand on my shoulder and pulls me away from the locker. I turn and see she has a pistol in hand, she must keep one in her desk or office somewhere. Everyone else is gathered around the door. “Everyone else is unarmed. You and I must take the lead. Do you know how to use that?”

“I’ve hunted,” I answer, and fall in behind her, matching her steps until we come to the door. A metal, sliding door with a stylized window that diverts into a diagonal halfway down.

“You have to shoot faster than hunting,” the doctor tells me, pressing the button next to the door and prompting it to slide open. I step out beside her, each of us looking one way down the hallway. The walls are white, with stripes of green and yellow that trace out directions to other parts of XCOM HQ. Around the corner to our left there are scream and flashes of plasma fire.

“Not this way,” I tell Vahlen, keeping my voice down for fear of alerting whatever was shooting over there. Footsteps are already coming in our direction, stamping against the tile floor. She takes the lead instead as our procession of trembling scientists creeps out and turns right. Rounding a corner, I hear someone cry out behind us and an inhuman roar. People begin to scatter and panic. A woman I knew as Julia is thrown like a ragdoll past the corner and into a wall, falling limp. My hands shake gripping my rifle.

I take note of the yellow line on the wall, words emblazoned along it in black: Engineering. “The engineering hangar! We should cut through there, it has off-duty SHIVs. They can cover us.” No one argues against me, and we begin a dead sprint down the hallway. Two sets of stomping boots follow behind us and I don’t have the willpower to look back, I know I’ll slow down or freeze up if I do.

Two bolts of green plasma sail past, one near enough that the heat singes my hair and leaves painful burns on the side of my face. It feels like the time I got sunburnt at the beach. Two thuds hit the floor behind me. I still don’t look back. The hangar doors are coming up ahead of us, tall dark metal at the intersection of a larger main hallway. And closed. I pray to any god who’s listening that these doors open fast. Doctor Vahlen breaks into a dead sprint I didn’t know she was capable of and practically football tackles the switch to call open the door.

With a metallic whine and a hiss of pistons it slides upwards. The stomping feet behind us are getting closer, and I can hear the sickening snap of what I can only assume are bones breaking. Channeling every tomb delving action flick I’ve ever seen, I slide, slipping under the partially opened hangar door. Doctor Vahlen drops to the ground and rolls sideways under it.

Behind us three others are trying to crawl through. I grab two of them by the arm and pull with all my might, dragging them inside. The third is too slow and something on the other side grabs him. He scrams and claws at the floor, the door halting its ascent and beginning to go back down. Doctor Vahlen is at the door controls closing and sealing it. Massive arms slam into the other side, pounding against the solid metal. It might hold against the mutons’ fists, but once they start using plasma that metal is going to melt like butter.

I turn and look into the hangar. The engineers are already three steps ahead of us, with makeshift cover formed out of conveyer belts, tables, and sheets of alien alloy. Three SHIVs are arrayed on extended accordion-shaped aerial lifts, like turrets in a tower defense. Their smooth, blocky grey armor plating contrasts with the red glow of their magnetic cannons. Doctor Shen waves his hand at us from further in. “Get into cover! The door won’t hold!”

The other scientists scramble up to their feet behind me, and we all move for cover. Leaping over a pair of conveyor belts, I drop down behind a layer of alien alloy sheet metal. Beside me is a man of Asian descent in an engineering uniform and overalls, squatting down with his head low. Clutched in his hands is a fist sized, spherical device. “Grenade?” I ask, looking over the sheet between us and the door. The mutons have opened fire on the other side, and holes are being bored in the solid steel structure, leaving smoldering red flames licking the air and an unsettling green glow to the melted metal. I rest my hunting rifle on the sheet of metal and take aim, waiting until something can be seen through the holes.

“EMP,” answers the engineer beside me. I’ve seen enough alien weapons to know that will interfere with their rifles, briefly. But it would be smarter to save it for the aliens’ robotic drones.

“Save it if you can,” I tell him. One eye squinted, I glare down the iron sights. The muton are keeping out of sight, and now there’s a human sized hole in the hangar door. The melted metal is pooling around the edges, and cooling into rolling folds like lava flows. Then one of the mutons swings around into the opening, rifle in hand.

Before my finger can squeeze the trigger, three deafening booms announce the firing of the magnetic cannons. The sound bounces back and forth through the hangar, leaving my ears ringing and my hands shaking from the force of it. One mag round rips through the wall, sending concrete chunks and shrapnel all over the open floor. The other two rounds rip through the muton’s alloy armor, punching through and remaining imbedded in its chest. I expect the alien to go down.

Instead, it opens fire. What kind of bath salts are the aliens on, do they feel no pain? I duck my head down and another bolt of searing plasma flies over me. This time I feel my hair catch fire from the sheer heat. “Aaagh! Shit, shit, help! Put it out!” In my panic I drop the hunting rifle at my feet. There is a metal clang as engineer guy drops his grenade, and thankfully it doesn’t go off.

He has to grab me by the shoulders and force me down before I run out of cover in my panic. “Hold still!” Swinging a messenger’s bag around from behind him, he dumps out a bunch of crap all over the floor and puts it around my head, slapping at the material with his hand to smother and pat out the flames. I’m screaming into the cloth of the bag. “It’s gone. It’s out!”

The bag is pulled off of my head and he throws it away. I grab at my head with a hand, feeling charred hair and painfully scalded skin beneath. But nothing feels like the fire got to my scalp. Thank god, I hope that means I’m not going to have a horrific bald spot burn scar. “Thank you, thank fuck for you man!” I shout at my covermate, grabbing up my rifle and taking deep breaths to steady myself.

Another trio of booms rattles the teeth in my head and reverberates in my bones, leaving me feeling jarred and shellshocked. I peek up over cover and see one muton on the ground with a metal spike through his head. The second muton is out of sight. “Are they both down?” I ask, shouting over the sound of my ears ringing.

“Only one!” Doctor Vahlen’s voice projects well, throwing across the hangar from where she’s crouched in cover behind an overturned table with another sheet of alloy leaned up against the underside.

I take another deep breath that doesn’t do very much to steady my hands, and set the rifle on the sheet in front of me again to help me keep it on target. Looking down the sights, I watch again for one of the mutons to lean out. Hoping that this time I can squeeze one off in time. The other one is smart enough not to go for it. Is he just waiting for backup?

“I can see the shadow; it is in cover behind the wall!” Doctor Vahlen calls to the rest of us.

“Can those SHIVs be ordered to verbally to target a point?” I ask the engineer next to me.

“No, but you can assume manual control. We have remote controllers for them,” he picks through the pile of notebooks, discarded snack wrappers, and candy bars that he dumped out of his bag. Coming up with a wide tablet. “I’m connecting to Goliath-1. Behind the wall?”

I take my eyes off of the rifle for a second and point at his screen. “Right there, the right-hand wall. I think a foot back from the door. Flush him out.”

Back to my position, I feel calmer now, more in control now that the beginnings of a plan are taking form. A plan of action. He flushes out the muton, I get a headshot. More realistically the other two SHIVs can spike through the target. Just need to be ready for the boom.

It thunders out, followed by the cracking and shattering of the wall the mag round blasts a hole the size of my head into. The muton combat rolls and leans out through the hole in the door to return fire. My weapon goes off, but the sheet underneath it is less secure than I expected. The rifle shifts down and the shot clangs against the muton’s weapon.

The split second of distraction is enough for two more SHIVs to put holes through the muton’s chest and eye with their magfire. The second alien drops to the ground, beside the other. Lying in a puddle of yellow-green blood.

I turn around and lean back against the sheet of metal, breathing out a sigh of relief. “Are the alarms still going or am I just hearing it in my head?” I ask, tilting my head to the left to look at the guy next to my, holding his EMP grenade in his lap.

“Still going.”

“That means we’re not done yet. What’s your name?”

“Chao,” he takes one hand off of the grenade and holds it out to me. I lay my rifle down by my side and shake his hand gladly.

“Cole.”

“You’re a good spotter, Cole,” Chao lets go of my hand and his arm flops to the ground as he takes a big sucking breath inwards. “God. I don’t know if I remembered to breathe through all that.”

All of the facility guards are rushing out of the shanty town towards the laboratory. I can hear gunshots and plasma fire, see flashes of green in the corner of my eye that sets off a pounding in my chest. Grace runs out of the armory ahead of us with an assault rifle I her hand and her armor hastily buckled. One of her shoulderpads comes off in her hard sprint. I catch the door before it shuts using my foot and help Chao inside.

“I don’t think you can shoulder a rifle right now,” I leave Chao leaning on a workbench for support and run to the rack of pistols. I lean my rifle up on the wall and begin fumbling to pick one up and load it. They’re XCOM standard, high caliber. They have to be to have a hope of denting alien armor. This thing is probably going to sprain Chao’s arm or break his wrist at some point, but an assault rifle would just floor him.

He takes it in his right hand, and the rifle finds its way back into mine. “I saw two of ours’ down already,” Chao reports.

“Then we need to go support them, fast. Even if it’s just,” I run out of breath and have to stop for a second before finishing, “Cover. Just cover them.” Our conditions aside, both of our voices are steady. A far cry from our blind panic years ago when we first met. “Shit, who was down?”

“Harry. And one of the scientists, I couldn’t see his face.”

I nod and reach out to put a hand on the door, pushing it open. The door is a layer of rippled sheet metal welded to some old hinges. The heavy material feels lighter than it should, with all the adrenaline starting to hit my system. Chao tries to keep a straight back and winces whenever he turns his torso. There is a deafening roar that both of us recognize as a berserker. We exchange one look, and a nod.

The two of us step out to meet our fate.


	5. Chapter 5

By the time we get there, it is already a mess. Chaos has broken out throughout the laboratory, the main doors have been bent and pried open from the outside, the metal misshapen like putty. The booming sounds of magnetic weapons and the scalding hiss of plasma are all around us, but even those are drowned out by the sound of the two behemoths wrestling in the middle of the room.

One of them is a monster with arms the size of tree trunks, attached to a body that puts even gorillas to shame. Plated dermal armor the color of exposed muscle covers her arms, chest, and comically small legs. And still those stubby legs are as tall as I am, and a kick from one would snap me in half. Yellow pus leaks out around sickly wounds where glowing implants have been thoughtlessly hammered into the berserker’s body, uneven and scattered as if applied using a jackhammer.

Facing off against her is our very own girl, Subject Beta. Her flesh retains the green hue of a normal muton, not sickly pale and raw as ADVENT’s berserkers. But the modifications from a baseline muton were obvious even in her infant stages. Even the same form of cybernetics, which must have been installed as early as birth. She outgrew them as she got older, forcing us to improvise larger, far less sleek replacements when her body started to fail without the machines to regulate the unnatural cocktail of hormones and chemicals pumping through her. I always felt bad for Beta. She was never able to learn or connect the way Gamma was, but none of that was her fault.

Now that she’s been broken loose from her containment tube I’m just terrified of her. She bends down and plants her forehead against the smaller berserker’s chest, lifting her opponent above her and swinging backwards. The huge body sails through the air like crumpled paper and slams into the metal wall, denting it. Beta doesn’t take a second to let up and is immediately running after her target. She goes right past the opening where Chao and I are taking cover, making the ground shake with every pounding step.

“I’m glad I used the washroom before this,” I can hear Chao crack wise behind me, deflecting the fear obvious in his quivering voice. I don’t blame him. How we’re going to deal with the rampant berserkers is completely beyond me, so for now I decide to take the better part of valor.

“Let them fight it out with each other.”

Leaning out from behind my wall, I try to get a sense of what we can actually help with. Cold wind from outside is blowing in and I feel it against my face. Outside the blast doors the ADVENT berserker totaled, there are aliens in cover, in the cave where I typically enjoy my morning coffee. From a quick glance I can count at least two mutons, three vipers, and an ADVENT officer in trademark red.

Facility security is trying to fight back, but I can see it’s already a losing fight. Harry is lying in the middle of the room wheezing. There is a burnt, blackened hole in his side where a plasma bolt ripped right through his armor and cauterized the wound as it went. I can see Jonesy at the front, taking cover behind the ruined blast doors and returning fire with his shotgun. Grace is directly across from him with an automatic rifle in her hands.

There is a second doorway that leads between the laboratory and our cavernous common area. Modesty is kneeling behind it with her sniper rifle resting on a crate and taking aim. I hear a crack as the barrel flashes, and a hole is blown straight through the ADVENT officer’s open, exposed mouth. She cuts him off mid order and he slumps onto the metal fence in front of him.

Subject Alpha is still contained in his tube. His flesh is a burnished red and, like Beta, the modifications to his body were already extensive when we got him. But they were incomplete. Doctor Vahlen insisted on obtaining an alien alloy forge to construct a uniform based on ADVENT’s designs. At the time I had no idea why she would bother, but now? Knowing her plans for command implants he might have been meant to do… something. Some false flag operation, maybe.

And then my heart skips a beat when I see a serpentine shape coiled up behind the shattered remnants of the third containment tube. There are many small cuts along Gamma’s body from the broken glass, and his movements are sluggish and dazed, still under the effects of his tube’s paralytic cocktail. “Gamma!” I call out to him, and he looks up at me with wide fearful eyes. I want to tell him to get over here, but there’s too much space to cover and too much plasma flying. “Stay down, then make a break for us when it’s clear!”

I need to make him that opening. “Chao, I need to grab an empty box or something, cover Jonesy.” Leaving the nearest spot to the edge of the doorway, I step back and look for a crate, same as the one Modesty is using. Chao takes my place and leans out to squeeze off a couple of shots with his pistol.

Grabbing hold of a crate reinforced with metal, I try to heave it across the uneven cave floor towards the doorway. Dragging it is too much, the bottom edges are catching on stones and terrain. “Fuck!” I shout, kicking the crate in an attempt to make it move and only stubbing my foot for the trouble. A long growl and hiss of air escape as I feel the jolt of pain shoot up my leg and my spine. Deciding to ditch the crate idea, I drop down on the ground and crawl along to find a good angle. If I need to be exposed I can at least keep my profile low, and use the ground to steady my shots.

Lying on my stomach on the hard stone floor is painful and pebbles dig uncomfortably into my gut. Lining the scope of my hunting rifle into place, I take aim from out of one doorway and straight through the other, zeroing in on one of the mutons. I wonder to myself how hard their skulls are, that they don’t bother wearing full helmets.

With one last breath in, I steady my weapon and squeeze the trigger. The shot rings out with a familiar crack, but and the muton is thrown backwards by the impact, falling out of view. I can’t see if he’s dead or not, but I pop a new round into place using the bolt and scan for another target.

“Nice shot, Cole. Oh, oh no no no-”

I can hear Chao congratulating me, just before something fully obscures my view through the scope. Beta is standing above us in the doorway. In one of her hands the other berserker is hanging limply, gripped by the throat and thick neck bent at an unnatural angle. Beta’s eyes are locked onto Chao, deep heaving breaths from her enormous lungs blowing misty air out into his face. The engineer turned soldier stumbles and falls backwards, crawling away. Not content to let the new subject of her attention out of sight, Beta walks towards him, her footsteps trembling the ground beneath me.

I roll to the side and up to one knee, getting into a standing position. “Subject Beta! Beta!” some stupid part of my mind compels me to get her attention myself, get her off of Chao. Just moments before her foot sets down in front of his own clambering desperately against the floor, her head turns towards me. Her face is covered by a thick, steel helmet with dim eye spots. The helmet is switched off right now, acting as a blinder. She can’t see me, only hear.

Two long steps bring her closer to my position than I am comfortable with. I am not comfortable being anywhere that you could describe as close to her. Feeling the weight of my bad decision bearing down, I try sidestepping her. No good, Beta’s hearing is better than I expected. Her head turns to follow me, and a heaving breath builds up in her chest, rumbling and shaking until it builds into a roar. Gobs and streams of spit fly through the air, splattering my face. In spite of myself I scream.

Whether she took the scream as answer to her challenge or intended to charge either way, her powerful footfalls give chase after me as I turn tail to run, without any hope of outrunning her. My heart hammers against the inside of my chest as I feel death closing in.

Thud! A loud thud behind me, a huge shape hitting the stone. I dare to turn around and look, and Beta has fallen, tripped? No. A mound of ice has formed around one of her legs, pinning it to the floor and sending her momentum swinging down into the ground face first. Behind her, Gamma is low against the ground, slithering like a serpent around the corner from inside the laboratory.

“Gamma, keep your distance!” I warn him. But the viper is already gliding nearer over the floor. It takes Beta little effort to wrench free her leg, shattering the ice like - well, like much thinner ice. She spins around to seek out and pummel what interrupted her and locks onto Gamma.

“I do not want to hurt you,” Gamma tries to placate her, backing away nervously when her pounding footsteps start to close the distance. “We are in the same situation, you and I. Please listen!” His words fall on deaf or uncomprehending ears. Beta’s fists lift up and form together into a hard ball, with the size and all the power of a solid steel wrecking ball.

A crack of gunfire rings out, and Beta twitches as my rifle round makes contact. It chips one of her teeth, in that wide flowering mouth of hers’, and glances off with all the gravitas of a BB round. Hands and arms swinging down, she backhands Gamma and sends his upper body sliding backwards across the floor, tail trailing behind him. Stretching herself out wide, she lets loose another fearsome roar and resumes charging my way. We just keep trading her wrath back and forth, with no way to get out of this.

“Stop!” Gamma releases a wheezing cough and shouts after her. This time, she does not take pause like the viper he shouted at. All her force is bearing down on me like a freight train, ready to reduce my bones to powder. I could raise my gun, fire again, there’s no way I could miss a shot like this. But there’s no point. Chao unloads a full magazine from his pistol into her back and she doesn’t even flinch, doesn’t change course this time.

I close my eyes and feel the pounding in the floor. “Just go away!” Gamma shouts, and I feel a rush of air in front of me, her fists swinging up to pound me into the ground like a nail. I lower my head. If I can’t see it coming maybe I won’t even feel it, maybe her fists will reduce my brain to paste before it registers anything more than the fearful pounding in my chest.

The hit never comes. Her slam does not flatten me out like a pancake. I can’t feel the ground trembling anymore, either. Hesitantly I open up my eyes and behold an unreal sight. In front of me, it is like God picked up the page and shoved his pencil right through. A vortex of swirling, glowing purple is whirling and draining into a black hole in the center, where the rush of air around me is going. Beta is gone. And just as quickly as the hole opened up, it folds inwards and vanishes without a trace.

Chao, Gamma, and I remain still and silent, stunned, in awe and waiting for the other shoe to drop. The only sound is gunfire and plasma from the other room, and I can hear the shattering of glass - another tube? Is Alpha free too, now?

“Come on,” I try to snap them out of their stupor, snapping my fingers in front of Chao as I pass him. He fumbles an extra mag from in his pocket and loads up his pistol. I walk over to Gamma and stand in front of him, looking at his face, trying to read what he’s feeling. “Are you alright?” Reaching out, I take his arm in one hand and look at the shallow cuts in his scales from the test tube glass. There are small shards still embedded in his flesh. “Did you scrape up your back when she slapped you?”

Gamma indignantly pulls his arm back and looks away, folding his hood inwards, shyly. “I am fine, I do not need you to coddle me right now. I need to-” he cuts himself off and looks down at the ground, uncertain.

“We should help the others. ADVENT has them badly outgunned. Do you think you can do that freezing spit thing again?” I ask, hesitantly reaching up to where a large shard of glass is stuck into the back of his hood, alien blood dribbling down. But with how he responded last time I lower my hand, resting it back on my rifle.

“Why should I help you? You and everyone else. You kept me locked up in a tube, in a cage, my entire life. Who is ADVENT really? They are my people, coming to rescue me, are they not?”

With a deep breath and a sigh, I regret not disobeying Vahlen sooner to tell him the truth. “No, Gamma. They’re - they’re bad people. If you think we were bad, they will do worse. Everything is just numbers and resources to them. They’re like. They’re like Vahlen without me there, Gamma.”

He turns and looks me in the eye. Then his drift down, analyzing me, my body language and expression. Looking for any sign I could be lying to him. Again. “Fine,” his voice is indignant, and has more confidence now. “You will have my help on one condition. After this, I am not going back in the tube. Promise me.”

“As long as I’m breathing, I’m not letting anyone put you in that tube again.”

My answer satisfies Gamma, and he looks around. “Can I have a gun?”

“You don’t know how to shoot a gun,” I point out. The dust hanging in the air from Beta’s rampage irritates my throat, and I cough into my arm. Taking a look at the entrances to the lab, Modesty has moved from her position and I can’t see her now. I start moving towards the box she was using for cover and aiming support.

“It’s harder than it looks,” Chao butts in, jogging up to walk with me and lowering his profile as we get nearer to the sounds of gunfire. An inhuman battle shout rings out, and I can hear metal clanging against metal.

“No one asked you,” Gamma practically spits the words at Chao. I can see he still doesn’t trust anyone here but me.

I decide to nip this in the bud and tell him plainly, “You don’t need to talk like that to Chao, he’s alright. He’s a friend.” The time for talking is over, though. We arrive at the doorway and I crouch behind the metal crate. Chao sidles up against the wall and Gamma slithers beside me, curling around to look past the crate.

Things are an even worse mess than when we left. Part of the laboratory has been scorched by a plasma grenade and Henry’s body is melted onto the floor. The bodies of scientists who’d tried to help join the fight are lying on the hard metal or folded over control panels and crates of materials. Subject Alpha’s test tube is shattered and the staff that was on display next to it is missing. I can see a red shape flying around among ADVENT’s forces outside, slamming them with the staff like it’s a bar brawl. The weapon hadn’t been fully completed yet, not armed with plasma or anything. But he’s clocking mutons over the head and it seems to be working, so who am I to criticize.

The remnants of our team are taking hard cover and letting it play out, using the distraction as a breather. Melody, Jonesy, and Grace are all that’s left. Grace tenses up and grips her rifle tightly when she spots us. Or specifically when she spots Gamma. “Why is the test subject loose, Cole? We don’t need that thing lurking behind us!”

“Grace, calm down. Gamma just saved my life from Beta.” And then whatever the hell that other thing was happened. But that we can puzzle out later. “How many are out there?”

“Two more mutons and a dozen vipers. I swear, they must have a hatchery or something up… here,” Jonesy begins the thought, then hesitantly flicks a look towards Gamma. “Point is, we’re badly outgunned. Subject Alpha is-”

“Flying away,” Grace interrupts. I take a spot behind a crate and look, and sure enough Alpha has been spooked, or bored, or maybe he took too much fire. He is only a red dot on the horizon now.

“We’re badly outgunned,” Jonesy repeats and moves to his position next to the big gate, across from Grace’s. There’s already plasma fire coming our way again, and I duck my head down. Stomping footsteps and a clang of metal tell me something’s happening, and I peek around the side of the crate.

A muton ran up and positioned on the opposite side of the gate from Jonesy. He takes his shotgun and shoves it around the corner, pulling the trigger. The weapon kicks and goes off, slamming a wad of pellets into the alien’s chest. None of them pierce through the alien armor, but the muton is blown back out of cover by the force of the blast. One of the alien’s huge hands is wrapped around Jonesy’s shotgun and pulls it out of his hands.

I know I need to act fast. Bringing up my rifle, I aim as quickly as I can before the muton gets back into cover. My bullet sails out from the end of my barrel and scrapes along the muton’s scalp, striking the top of his head and slicing through the layers of crests that flow down to the base of the neck. It’s not a killshot, but the muton drops Jonesy’s shotgun and clutches his head. A rumbling groan escapes from its mouth, behind that gasmask.

Grace follows up with her assault rifle. A burst of bullets sprays up from the muton’s upper chest, raking across his face. The alien drops down in a puddle of orange-yellow.

Lifting one foot and extending it out of cover, Jonesy tries to kick his shotgun back into the room with us. There is a flash, fast as lightning, and a long, forked tongue shoots out to wrap around his ankle. “Oh no-” Jonesy is cut off as the powerful tongue yanks his leg out from under him, sending him halfway out of cover with his legs stretched wide in the splits. I can hear the pained noise in his throat, and he falls onto his back in cover behind the muton’s body.

I know the viper isn’t going to be content with leaving him there. Breaking into a crawling run from my cover to Jonesy, I slide in and grab his other leg, still wrapped around the structure of the gate to keep him in place. The viper’s grip is powerful, and his leg is going to be dislocated at this rate. Looking at the others for help, I see Gamma looking out from behind his tube and looking lost. “Gamma, freeze the tongue!”

Another tug gets my attention and all my strength is dedicated to holding Jonesy I place while he roars in pain. The sound of someone hocking a loogie behind me is followed closely by a gob of freezing cold fluid that splatters out onto the tongue partway down. The viper lets go of Jonesy’s leg in surprise and tries to retract her appendage, but it’s frozen to the floor and she’s left out of cover pulling at it in panic. Crack, the sound of a rifle going off and she drops. Modesty never fails to impress. “Reloading!” her deep, accented voice calls from somewhere I’ve lost track of.

Jonesy scoops up his shotgun and shouts, “Last muton!” The alien has broken cover and has a metal sphere held in its hands. “Plasma grenade! Get the fuck down!” The ranger rolls back inside and we both dive out of the way as the sphere clanks against the metal floor and goes off with not a bang, but a terrifying hiss. Green light washes over the room and a melted crater is left in the spot where Jonesy and I had just been.

The muton doesn’t stop his charge. He runs straight into a hail of bullets from Grace’s weapon and shoulder checks her into the ground, setting his foot on her chest and pressing down. There’s only a split second before he cracks through her ribs and crushes her organs.

A familiar hunk of metal hits the muton in the face and then goes off with a discharge of electricity, blasting through him like a taser to the face. Chao’s GREMLIN falls down onto the floor and something on it pops out. A full magazine of pistol fire is unloaded in the muton’s direction, but Chao’s aim with a gun is nowhere near as good as his throwing arm.

Luckily, Grace is not down for the count. She lifts her rifle and aims straight up, blasting through the muton’s head from below. Another of the giant red shock troopers topples to the ground.

Eleven vipers left, by my count. I try to help Jonesy to his feet, but he falters and falls every time he puts weight on that leg, with a blanking expression of pain. Just as I feared, something is dislocated. Or worse, broken.

I look at Gamma to see how he’s holding up. He’s found a partially charred automatic rifle near Henry’s remains and is coiled behind a control panel trying to figure out how it works. “Careful with that, Gamma! It’s harder to use than it looks!”

“I can figure it out, I am not a child,” he responds indignantly, flaring out his hood. There is no time to argue with him, as two vipers slither inside and I can hear more on the approach. No more rampaging test subjects, and our line is broken. ADVENT is going for the throat.

One viper scoops up Grace in her coils and grabs Grace’s rifle, tossing it away. The other fires a burst of sizzling plasma shots at Modesty’s position. The plasma burns through the metal crate, like butter melting in a pan. Our sniper is forced to fall back, but a tongue lashes out across the room and grabs her around the waist. Before anything can be done, the huge Russian woman is sailing through the air helplessly into a viper’s waiting arms.

Standing up, Gamma holds the automatic rifle in both hands and pulls the trigger as he’s seen us do. But he doesn’t take his time to aim, or try to line up the shot. His wild hipfire scatters up across the tail of the viper holding onto Grace, but riddles Grace’s body full of bullets. Then one stray shot goes right through her head, painting the wall behind her red. The injured viper drops her prey and falls back against the wall for support.

“Grace!” Jonesy’s voice cracks, and I can feel a cold dread in the pit of my stomach. He swings his shotgun around in one hand and tries to fire in Gamma’s direction. Instinct takes over and I knock his arm away. The shot goes wide and Gamma ducks into cover. “You goddamn snake lover! Get off of me!” Distraught, he shoves me away and falls to the ground on his side.

The infighting lets the vipers invade uncontested. One speeds along the laboratory floor, rising up around me and lifting me off of my feet. I can feel her powerful coils, like a tree trunk made of muscle, binding me tight and beginning to squeeze. My tired lungs gasp for air and find none. Jonesy and Modesty are both caught in the same trap, held and squeezed slowly. I can’t see Chao anywhere. He must have fallen back, or hid somewhere.

“I surrender,” I try to wheeze out, but the viper doesn’t listen. She bares her fangs, and a threatening hiss accompanies another tightening of her coils. I can feel my bones creak underneath the pressure. My vision blurs and sparkles from lack of air, spots of light flickering across my eyes.

Then she starts to loosen up. A thin white hand, with four digits, folds around the coil next to my head and pulls. The viper’s body loses tension. Even her expression changes from aggression to passivity, all it seems coming at Gamma’s touch.

“Stop! He is caught. They are all caught. Please, do not kill anyone else!” his voice begs and pleads. To my amazement, the vipers listen. They keep a firm grasp on me, and on the other two. But even those slithering in behind are lowering their weapons.

“What’s going on?” I ask myself out loud. My memory jumps back to what happened before when I was poisoned saving Chao. Gamma told the viper to stop, and she did. Remembering what I saw then, I turn my head and strain to see Gamma’s face.

His eyes are wide. Full of worry, and just as surprised as mine, processing what’s happening. Inside of their dark pools of blue, I can see a glimmer, a shine of purple underneath. It’s something I didn’t recognize at first, that I hadn’t seen since the Gift experiments during the invasion. I suck in air hungrily and voice my realization out loud. “You’re controlling them, Gamma. They listen to you.”

In his face I can see realization dawning. Followed by a more ominous raising of his hood horns, indicating excitement. Gamma is realizing that he’s the one in control, now.


	6. Chapter 6

We are led back through our facility. It will not be ours for long if the vipers with coils wrapped around us have anything to say. My arms are pinned at my side and it’s visibly difficult for her to move quickly with her tail partially occupied. Beside me, Jonesy is pointlessly struggling and pushing against the iron grip of a tube of pure muscle. He would have the same odds of arm wrestling an elephant.

At the front of the doomed procession back into our living space, two vipers are carrying the wounded one that Gamma shot up along with Grace. She is coiled upon their tails which glide over the ground like organic stretches. Bullet holes riddle the side of her own tail, leaking yellow blood all over the floor in a trail that looks like watery mustard.

Slowing his pace, Gamma falls back into line beside me and fixes me with a serious look. His voice is for once authoritative, and not reluctantly servile or obedient as it has been for many years. “Where is the doctor? The one that treated you?”

I think over the question. In the event of an attack, we had started making escape tunnels. But they collapsed partway through and the project was abandoned, the tunnels covered up. If I were someone looking for a place to hide, that would be it. “I can take you there. What are you going to do with us, Gamma?”

He is quiet and looks away from me. Intelligent eyes scan the cave for traces of life or resistance. No answer comes, and I hope that means he’s still not sure himself. One arm lifts from his side, and his finger points at the bunkhouse. Instructions are recited to the vipers, “Bring them there, but not this one. Tie them up.” I breathe out a sigh of relief that he is taking steps to imprison them, and not to kill them.

One arm, covered in snowy white scales, wraps around my prosthetic arm. At a silent instruction, the viper coiled around me lets go, and Gamma takes the lead of me personally. With his other arm he invites me to walk ahead of him. “Show me where they are.”

Swallowing to wet my dry mouth and throat, I take a few shaky steps forward. Even though my death by coil had been cut short, the viper had still done a number on me before Gamma made her stop. My legs are sore, and pain shoots up through me with every step. If anything were broken I would be a puddle whimpering on the ground right now, but there will be bruises everywhere. Maybe fractures that will get worse without treatment. 

The uneven floor catches my foot and I stumble, but I’m caught by a broad white tail with stripes of blue running down it like rivers through the snow. Gamma takes my shoulders with his hands and lifts me back upright. “Be careful,” he says, in a harsh voice dripping with concern. Not at all unlike when I would scold him for doing something wrong. I place my good hand over his own on my shoulder.

“Thanks. I’ve got it.”

He lets me go. I can feel the smooth, cool scales of his hand sliding away from under mine. Putting one foot in front of the other, I take it one step at a time. “What’s your range on that control?” I ask him. “What if we get too far?”

When at first he doesn’t answer I start to look behind me. But he places a hand against my head and turns me back forward. “I do not know. Okay? This is new. However, I can still feel them. We are connected.”

Gamma’s answer raises more questions in my mind. For now, I’m just glad the vipers aren’t going to shoot everybody the second we’re out of earshot. Thinking back on the wounded one, I consider her situation. Part of me still sees her as the enemy, but with Gamma in control? He doesn’t hate me. I can tell by the way he caught me after my fall. I tell him, “Make your vipers put pressure on the gunshot wounds. It’ll slow the bleeding until we get her patched up.”

“I will. Thank you.”

The tunnels are dug into the walls of the cavern and covered up with sheets of metal. They’re just leaned up there, nothing is keeping them bolted to the stone. Removing the cover is as easy as lifting the sheet of metal away. I guide Gamma to the first one and take hold of the edges of the metal, sliding it away.

On the other side I’m met with the barrel of a pistol, held in Chao’s shaking hands. His eyes are wide and frightened. The moment he spots me he starts to lower the weapon, that is, until he sees Gamma. “Cole, get out of the way.” His voice trembles and he takes a step back, aiming the gun again. Behind him crowded in the tunnel I can see everyone else who made it out of the attack but couldn’t fight.

Instead of following his orders, I move between Chao and Gamma with my hands raised up, palms forward. “Take it easy Chao, we’re not here to hurt anyone.”

“We?” Chao looks at me in disbelief. “I saw him capturing everyone. Why are you a we?” He shouts at me, backing up and nearly falling backwards over the uneven floor.

“Gamma is the one keeping the vipers from killing everyone, Chao. You can’t honestly expect him not to be cautious after everything we did,” I speak softly and slowly, keeping myself between Chao and Gamma. “Just put the gun down and we can all figure this out together.”

His shaking hands give me worry that he could pull the trigger by accident, with one wrong twitch. The shaking also means he’s having doubts. I would be more worried if his face was stony resolve. Slowly, Chao’s finger moves away from the trigger and he holds the gun out to me. I take it and switch on the safety.

As soon as the danger is over, Gamma pushes past me and towers over the researchers with his huge bulk. His spines are all flared out to make himself look bigger, and he speaks with a voice of authority. “There was an injury and we need the doctor. Everyone else will stay in the bed room with the other humans.”

An ebony face emerges from the throng cowering in the tunnel. Doctor MacAfee, who had treated Chao and myself. “I’m a doctor. Who was hurt?” Gamma doesn’t answer him, taking his arm by the wrist and pulling him out. “Hey! I can walk on my own, please, don’t yank my arm,” the doc protests.

“Cole, take them to the bed room.”

I do a small double take, realizing Gamma is giving me an order now. He’s letting me keep the gun, too? “What do you mean?” I ask after him. Gamma in his haste is already leading the doctor away, and no longer wrenching his arm in the process.

His face turns to meet my gaze, and his eyes lock right onto mine. “I trust you. No one needs to get hurt, make sure there is no trouble.”

The sentiment would be touching. If I did not feel the gaze of multiple people locked onto the back of my skull as Gamma left. I’d talked Chao down and now Gamma was giving me a gun, and giving me orders. A certain word rings in my head, clear as a bell. Collaborator. Wounds from the old world government caving under the aliens haven’t healed, in a lot of the people here.

The last thing I need now is to be alienated from everyone. So I try to keep myself from sounding too authoritative when I tell everyone behind me, “Come on. Let’s get some rest.” Reluctant to look back and see what their faces are like, I just start walking. The gun in my hand feels strange, but I don’t have a holster. So I just carry it by the barrel to show everyone I’m not going to use it.

Outside of our habitat are the vipers are on guard, standing firm and straight. Nearly a dozen armed aliens with plasma weapons and military posture. When I reach the bunkrooms the viper outside holds up one of her long-fingered hands in a gesture that I assume means “stop”. She places her hand upon my arm and moves me to the side with surprising strength for the lithe structure of her arms.

There is a twitch of her hood and she opens the door, pointing at the line of people behind me. “Inside,” she breathes out, much to many of our surprise, in English. Not good English, but English. Now separated from the other humans again, I have to watch each of them go by and shoot their looks at me. Chao, with understanding. Some with sympathy. Most with suspicion or anger they need to channel somewhere, and I happen to be an easy target right now.

“Why don’t I go in with them?” I ask the viper, hoping she understands English too. Or is it Gamma I’m talking to? How deep does this mind control go? Her eyes that fix me with the hardness of a soldier might be the answer. I see nothing of Gamma in them.

“They, prisoners. You go there.” Her arm lifts up and those long fingers point the way, her sharp claw directing me to Doctor Vahlen’s personal office. My eyes follow and settle upon the shack. The same as all the others, made out of scraps of metal and lumber.

Heaving out a sigh, I turn from the viper and trudge over the uneven stone floor to reach the office. A small metal padlock is attached to it on a latch. “Locked of course.” Grumbling, I take one step back and try ramming my shoulder into the door. The wavy metal reverberates like thunder and the shack shudders, but the door does not cave under the force.

Long, thin fingers curl around my shoulder, and instinctively I jump and yelp. When I spin around, Gamma is looming behind me with his hood flared, startled by my reaction. “It is only me,” he reassures, breathing out through his nose in little trails of steam that disperse in the cold air. “You are having trouble entering?”

“Sorry, you just startled me. You’re really quiet when you move,” I laugh nervously, the vocalization dying halfway through. Locking eyes with him again, I can see a strange look on his face, and his horns are drooping. “Uh, anyhow. Vahlen had the door locked. I couldn’t force it open.”

“Allow me to try,” his hand gently urges me to the side. Rearing back, Gamma’s hood flares and his mouth opens up, fangs and tongue bared as he breathes in deeply. Then a hocking, spitting sound and a splash of freezing liquid coats the padlock. The end of his tail coils up and wraps around the padlock, the long gripping treads that form his underside firmly taking hold. Then he yanks with all the tons of force that coiled, solid muscle tail can muster. The lock snaps off with a sound of crunching metal.

Gamma looks at me, proudly lifting himself up into a tall posture and holding up the broken lock in his hand. I reach over and pat him on the tail, “Yeah. Nice going, kid.”

“I am not a kid anymore,” he insists, tossing the lock over his shoulder in a huff where it clacks against the rock. The pout he’s wearing doesn’t do a lot to dissuade me from my statement. Right now though, I don’t feel like getting into something over it. I just open the door and step inside.

The central feature of the office is a nice metal desk with a wooden top. Behind it a rolling office chair with the wheels removed and replaced with standing feet, so it doesn’t fall all over on the uneven floor. Doctor Vahlen’s computer is an old relic, a blocky grey office computer she scavenged from somewhere. It was old and outdated even pre-war. Maybe these are just too outdated to hack.

The entire left side of the room is dominated by Vahlen’s bedroom, as much as there is. A cheap cot just like ours’, but the footlocker is empty and I see that a briefcase that was always here on my previous visits is gone. The doctor made her getaway during the fighting.

On the right side of the room are kitchen counters, but no kitchen. Instead she used them as filing cabinets. The cupboards are full of binders and folders of notes and on top is a resistance radio setup. A cold chill runs down by spine when I notice the broadcasting light on. Gamma doesn’t know anything about radios, so he doesn’t notice it when he slithers inside past me. “She is not here,” he practically spits more freezing fluid on the floor, voice dripping venom as surely as his fangs.

“She cut her losses,” jaded, I mutter while I go to the radio. Something is being put out on mute with the speakers off. I don’t know what’s on the tape it’s broadcasting, but my hand reaches out and hovers over the off switch. If the resistance shows up, things aren’t going to go peacefully. And when they find Gamma, find out what we were doing here? But I hesitate. A distress signal might be our only chance to get out of this before things dissolve. What about food? A dozen giant snakes must need a ton of food to sustain all that body mass.

“Is something wrong?” his voice asks behind me. In spite of everything that drove a wedge between us lately, I can still hear concern in his voice, not suspicion. The war between guilt and self-preservation wrestles inside my gut. I pull my hand back, even though it leaves me with a burning inside, screaming angrily at me.

“No, nothing.”

“Do you know what this is?” Gamma is standing next to the computer on Vahlen’s desk with a puzzled expression, the horns on the sides of his head twitch now and then when he’s thinking hard about something. I had never been allowed to show him any technology, even as much as a phone or a tablet. His claws would have scratched up the screen, but I think it was about more than that. Keeping him reliant on us.

One hand, I lay upon his side to gently urge him out of the way so that I can take a seat in front of it. His body is solid and he doesn’t budge under my hand, but he complies anyways. I take a seat on the old office chair and it squeaks loudly, causing us both to flinch. “This chair needs oil bad.” I reach down and press the power button on the computer. The telltale jingle of an old Windows operating system booting up fills my ears with nostalgia of the good old days of dial up internet. Everything was simpler then. “Gamma, this is a computer. They hold information, kind of like a book.”

I have his attention. Gamma slithers around behind me and practically rests his head on top of mine to watch the image on the screen. “What is this pattern it shows?”

“That’s the symbol of the company that made the computer. I don’t think I told you much about how commerce works, do you remember what a company is?”

“That is like the publisher of a book?”

“Close enough.”

The screen changes to a login screen after the computer loads in. A small groan dies in my throat. It’s annoying, but I should have expected it. Vahlen wouldn’t leave her personal computer unlocked for anyone to open. “Sorry Gamma, no luck here. Vahlen put a lock on the computer, we can’t break this one open. We’ll have to look at her physical notes.” I turn the computer off to conserve power from the generator and spin the chair around to face Gamma.

Sitting across from him during our lessons, it doesn’t usually occur to me just how huge he is. Here now, sitting in this chair up close, close enough to reach out and wrap my arms around him, he towers over me. Disappointment is writ clearly on his face when he doesn’t get to see how the computer really works. I force a smile and pat him on the shoulder as I stand. “Don’t worry. I think I know how to make a guest account on it, we just can’t see any of Vahlen’s information on there.”

Gamma looks down at my hand and reaches out to place his on my opposite shoulder. “I have seen you do this before. With me and other humans you are friendly with. What does it mean?”

“Oh, I never told you?” flustered a little in embarrassment, I scratch at the collar of my neck. Some teacher I am. “Sorry, Gamma. It’s a way of showing support and comfort when someone is feeling uneasy, or disappointed.”

“Like a hug?” he asks.

“Yes, sort of like a hug. Hugs though, they’re different. Those are usually reserved for people closest to you.”

There is a strange expression of sadness on his face, and his eyes get distant looking away over my shoulder. I might call it an expression of nostalgia. I’ve rarely seen it on someone, since it’s usually myself when I’m feeling old. Gamma opens his mouth and hesitates, then voices something quietly. His hands are folded together in front of him, rubbing the backs of his fingers furtively. “You used to hug me when I was small. But you do not anymore.”

“Oh.” Gamma’s words leave me speechless. Like him, avoiding his gaze. My eyes settle on the cabinet piled full of notes. “It’s complicated. Can we talk about it later?” I get up from the chair and gently slide past him, where he was sitting so close beside me. He doesn’t answer me, so I take the smooth sliding sound of his slithering behind me as a yes.

Sitting down cross-legged in front of the cabinet, I grunt at the strain on my knees. Pulling it open, the folders and documents are piled even higher than I remember. “This’ll go faster if we both read through it. Let me know if there are any words you don’t understand,” I tell Gamma as I take one of the clinical white folders into my hands. Biological readings and anatomy. It feels a little odd to me to read about Gamma’s biology with him sitting right next to me, like an invasion of privacy. Or can I be sure it’s about Gamma? There are two other subjects.

Gamma’s long fingers drag a second folder off of the pile and accidentally pull another off to fall onto the floor. He grabs it and puts it back, looking embarrassed even by the small mishap. “This is just like storytime,” he reminisces, bringing memories back to mind.

My voice rumbles out from my throat, deep and clear. Gamma sits across from me with his hands pressed down onto the edge of the chair underneath him. His eyes are wide with rapt attention, and the end of his tail thumps against the cold plastic of the chair.

Ever since I convinced Vahlen to let him eat real food to keep him filled out, Gamma has had more energy and a brighter outlook. He’s starting not to look so thin, too.

“Mister Cole?” Gamma asks, pulling me away from the book and my reading. I stop to allow him to say what’s on his mind. The lisp in his voice has gradually vanished, something he’s been very proud of. I think he was more aware than he let on of how it made him sound different from us, his only role models. “Can I sit with you for storytime today?”

The question catches me off guard. For as long as I’ve been here, things have been done from across the table. Apart from the eccentric song and dance routine that got me in trouble. Naturally my first instinct is to look up at the gallery, from which Vahlen and her cohorts are watching. I don’t always agree with the doctor, but going ahead without her permission again would be hazardous for my job.

Her head nods subtly. I’m not sure why, unless she’s changed her tune since last time. I meet Gamma’s hopeful eyes and smile back at him, “Sure. Come over here, we can read together.” Like lightning he flops down onto the floor and slithers under the table, gliding up onto my chair. His tail curls around through the arm of the chair and back in from the other side in a tight serpentine hug that holds me to the seat. “Hey, whoa,” I laugh and place a hand on his head, scratching his smooth, scaly scalp with my nails. “Don’t go squishing me against the chair. Your tail muscles are powerful, you need to be more gentle with your hugs.”

Gamma responds by loosening his grip, looking up at me with apologetic eyes. “Sorry.”

“It’s alright. Do you want to read the next page?”

He nods and turns around, settling onto my left knee and rising up to get a good look at the book in front of us.

That cold, hard pit is back now. Forming in my stomach and weighing me down like a bag of bricks. My eyes run back and forth across the page, doubling back to reread what I can’t believe is real. What I don’t want to believe.

_Subject Gamma’s cells continue to replicate and decay at an accelerated rate. Small imperfections such as marks from needles heal instantaneously. I expect the same result would occur after injury._

_This has had the side effect of rapidly aging Subject Gamma from childhood, through adolescence, and to adulthood in only ten years. Extracting and scanning genetic samples shows that the Subject’s cells have already begun to decline. It is past its peak and will begin to weaken with age. Estimated lifespan of twenty years. Estimated five years before Subject is no longer useful for military application. Attempting genetic intervention to slow cell decay would likely result in wild cancerous growths around even the smallest injury._

_The slower method of compelling Subject compliance will not suffice. I must take measures to acquire the control chips sooner rather than later._

It does nothing to help me that these condemning words are written in her cold, distant hand. There is no bedside manner, no regret or concern. Only how Gamma can be useful to her. My posture and expression must have keyed Gamma in that something is wrong, because he looks up and fixes his gaze on my face.

A long blue tongue flicks out, slithering through the air and tasting the palpable anxiety hanging between us, then vanishing just as fast. “You are pale and distressed. What did you read?”

I swallow, trying to wet my dry mouth and throat. The words to tell him evade my tongue completely, not making it between brain and muscle, and vanish before I can find them. Instead, I take the paper from the sheaf inside of the folder and hold it out to him. “I don’t think I can say it out loud.” Not without my already strained voice cracking.

The only thing I can do is watch his face. Gamma was always good at math, and I can see the moment the gears turn and he realizes how long he has. The way his hood shrinks down, and his eyes widen. Fear responses, trying to hide as if the truth, as if time, is a predator he can escape from. The sympathetic sorrow beats me down with pain in my chest, and a stinging pain in the corners of my eyes where tears press against them from within.

“Why?”

That’s the only word that Gamma can manage to whisper out, only a weak murmur from between his scaly lips. I don’t have an answer for him. Instead, I do the only thing I can think of and pull my stiff legs out from their curled positions to stand up taller on my knees. It gives me the reach to lean across the pile of notes between us and wrap my arms around Gamma, pulling his torso forward. All the powerful muscles in his tail and abdomen could have pulled away, broken free if they wanted, but he lets himself fall into it. Two long arms wrap around me, as mine wrap around him. His head folds down underneath my chin, burying his face in my neck. I swear I can feel wetness from his face run down, guided by the shape of my collarbone to trickle onto my chest.

In all of our time together, even when he was young, I’ve never seen Gamma cry. I wasn’t even aware he could cry. I guess it was my brain associating him with the reptilian traits I expect given his appearance.

Gamma’s tongue flicks out in the way it usually does, this time running down my shirt and tickling my chest with our close proximity. I can feel the stress turning his body cold, and his breath right against my skin makes me shiver. Gamma finally finds more words. “I need answers. I need you to tell me the truth. All of it.”

My hand squeezes Gamma’s shoulder softly. “Tomorrow. I don’t know… how much I can talk right now without breaking down.” My voice, hoarse with sadness, reaches him. I can feel him nod, brushing up against my beard. Gamma breathes out again, a long breath in which I feel the cold stress drain away and turn back to warmth. He nuzzles into my neck, rubbing his forehead and the back of his hood against my chin, brushing back and forth along the scratchy, frayed hair of my beard. It’s a strange feeling, more intimate than I’m comfortable with.

He pulls away, his head hovering just above mine to meet my eyes with his deep pools of black and blue. “Thank you, Cole. I needed that.” The horns along his hood quiver in embarrassment, much as a human’s face might grow flush, and he looks away. “I hate showing weakness in front of all of those…” his voice trails off, unable to find the right word for the scientists, or words harsh enough to convey his feelings.

“We should get some sleep. Figure everything out tomorrow,” I tell him, standing on shaky legs asleep after all of this sitting. Gamma’s firm grip steadies me. I let out a nervous laugh and rub my arm underneath the sleeve, scratching at the hair along the back with my nails. “If you like being brushed, we have some hairbrushes.”

Gamma is silent, tongue flicking out, curving in my direction through the air even as he looks away. “How do I sleep?”

“Yeah, sleep. Oh- oh…” I stop. The sudden realization hits me that he hasn’t truly slept, not that I know of. Is that even possible? He’s always in that suspension fluid. No bed, or whatever a normal viper sleeps on. It’s something he’s only ever heard of in stories. “Sleeping is. Come over here.” Deciding it’s easier to show than to tell, I guide Gamma to Vahlen’s bed. I realize he’s still in his improvised field armor from the other day, so I help him slip out of the troublesome thing.

“Lay your upper body on this and… find some way to get the rest of you comfortable.”

Gamma follows my instructions and slides onto the bed, lying on his stomach. His arms aren’t comfortable like that, so he tries turning over onto his back, finally looking up at me. His bare torso is strangely human, between the hooded neck and the long serpentine tail, but completely flat and featureless besides the outline of his ribs. He’s still terribly scrawny even with my efforts to barter him more exercise time. I guess bartering for any sort of time won’t be a problem anymore.

Catching myself, I realize that I’ve already resolved to stay in my mind. And instead of bringing me more disquiet, that realization brings me closure. A sense of certainty that I’d lacked when I came into this shack full of poisoned words. I’m not letting Gamma go through this alone, no matter what.

“Now what do I do?” his words snap me out of my internal reverie. My eyes flick up from his chest to his face and I laugh humorlessly.

“If I mastered the art of sleeping I wouldn’t need coffee in the morning. Just let your body relax, and let your mind drift. Close your eyes. It should come naturally if you just let go.” Closing his eyes, another thing that sets him apart from an earth reptile. The eyelids slide in from the sides instead of the top and bottom, sealing away his dark orbs behind them.

My own body aches for a rest after the multiple floods of adrenaline from today. It’s worn out and running entirely on empty. Whatever problems are coming tomorrow, we can deal with them tomorrow. But there is one I can deal with now.

While Gamma settles, I walk over to the radio that Vahlen set on a silent distress beacon. No hesitation this time, as I quietly flick it off with my finger and the broadcasting light goes dark. Letting myself down to the floor, I drag Vahlen’s floor rug under my head and lie back on it.

“You are going to sleep on the floor?” Gamma asks, one eye open and watching me.

“There’s no room on that bed for two.” Even if that wouldn’t be extremely awkward. “And I don’t think I’d feel safe with the others right now. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.” I slept on worse in the aftermath of the invasion. Of our defeat.

His eye shuts again and I take a deep breath, letting the tension flow out. He copies me, breathing in and then exhaling deeply. I don’t remember the exact moment sleep came to me, but it did. So tired was I that it was a deep, dreamless sleep.

Only one last thought before it came upon me. I wondered what Gamma’s first dream would be about.


End file.
